


Peter's Diary

by Stilienski_daily



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Derek Hale, Angst, But The Diary Is The Therapist, Childhood Memories, Diary/Journal, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Introspection, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, POV First Person, Peter Hale Needs a Hug, Post-Hale Fire (Teen Wolf), Sentimental, Slow Burn, Slow Burn but Soulmates So They're Basically Already Married They Just Need a Date, Soulmates, Therapy, They've Both Grown Out of Their Failwolf Phase, True Alpha Scott McCall (Teen Wolf)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:20:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 57
Words: 29,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22066165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stilienski_daily/pseuds/Stilienski_daily
Summary: Dear diary,I’m not in fact an angsty 12 year old teenager, but you were gifted to me this Christmas. I thought it would only be polite to actually use you. I could have just treated you as a regular old notebook, but I don’t think Stiles was joking when he said you were a diary, even though everyone else seemed to think it was funny.The link he included to 365 journaling prompts to self-discovery was also a good clue.Even though I don’t know why he thought using you would do any good, I’m not dumb enough to look a gift horse in the mouth. Especially when it’s been given by the pack’s emissary. Especially especially when it smells of magic.So I suppose you’re my New Year’s resolution for 2020: answer one of these journaling prompts every single day (+1 of course, because 2020 has 366 days, Stiles).Love,Peter
Relationships: Peter Hale/Original Character(s), Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 641
Kudos: 305





	1. 01/01/2020

**Author's Note:**

> Daily updates as Peter writes his daily journal entries. Which are going to be very short, because Peter doesn't have time to spend five hours trying to get to a certain word count.   
> Please join me in a deep dive into Peter Hale's backstory and psyche, which we all know is going to be sad.  
> Read the tags and warnings, I'll update them as we go.

_**Goals you have for this year.** _

Before, I used to make a short bucket list every New Year’s eve, but the past couple of years it felt like it would jinx us all. But it’s been surprisingly good lately. Derek and Scott seem to finally have gotten their shit together (largely thanks to Stiles of course). Somehow they managed to properly establish the pack. There can be no more confusion over who owns this land now. Not a lot of people are still willing to risk their hides for a piece of Beacon Hills. 

Dare I say, my nephew did good with his eclectic pack. That, combined with the name they’ve made for themselves after overthrowing the alpha pack, has done wonders for the supernatural pest control in this little town.

So it’s been quiet, peaceful. Maybe I’m being too hopeful, but this time it just doesn’t feel like we’re all still waiting for the other shoe to drop, this time it feels like a peace that’s her to stay. It certainly doesn’t feel fragile enough to be jinxed by some New Year’s resolutions.

If Stiles thought it was a good idea for me to keep a diary, and if he thought this list of journaling prompts was a good one, I must not be alone in my hopeful assumptions. Honestly of all the possible Christmas gifts. I do enjoy the feeling of writing again though. Sorry. I digress. My point is that it feels like a good time to start writing a yearly bucket list again.

So here we go, in no particular order:

  
·Keeping up with this diary  
·Get a cat  
·Put the old photographs in an album  
·Watch Stiles’ face when he finds out I was Batman for Halloween seven years in a row  
·Watch Stiles’ face when he notices that's baby Derek dressed as Robin   
·Convince Derek and Scott to rebuild/build a pack home  
·Find my own place in their pack

Well I can only assume Stiles gave me this notebook and attached homework with the intention of it getting “real” and “deep” every once in a while. I’m starting to think his first idea for a Christmas gift was to get me some therapy sessions only to then figure out he couldn’t afford it. It is quite strange how putting your thoughts on paper can almost make it feel like someone is listening though. It certainly gives me some perspective on things. 

For example how some of the items on my little bucket list really aren’t all that hard to accomplish, especially considering all the time I have on my hands these days. I might get started on that photo album soon. Might even happen to finish it in a week or two. And who knows, it might end up accidentally forgotten at the loft around Derek’s birthday.

Where do you buy photo albums? 


	2. 01/02/2020

**_Start today’s entry with the first sentence of your favorite book_ **

Stiles, this is some bullshit gift, you know that? What kind of deranged psychopath (oh shut up) has a favorite book? How is anyone supposed to choose? I refuse to give up on this diary crap, but I definitely refuse to pick a favorite ~~child~~ book. I’ll take the first sentence of the book I’m currently reading (for posterity: The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern) which is going on my - admittedly quite long - list of favorite books anyway.

“There is a pirate in the basement.” Dear god I hope not. Alright starting the actual diary entry now.

There is a pirate in the basement. Well technically, there’s a pirate in the attic. It was sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I don't remember exactly. What I do remember is how Laura had still been in the Halloween spirit, dragging her brother in with her. They were both up in the attic, surrounded by cardboard boxes, pillows, blankets and any other materials the kids had deemed fit for building a pirate ship worthy of the pirate queen.

In general I tended to stay out of their playtime. Reading time was the exception to that rule. I barely spent time with my nieces and nephew at all to be honest. I was seventeen then, there was no way I would voluntarily play babysitter to my annoying sister’s annoying children. But as it was, my pillowcase had mysteriously disappeared and I had a feeling the culprit was wearing an eye patch. It turned out the culprit was also wearing a familiar looking dark navy pillowcase somehow fashioned into a pirate hat.

Laura had growled as soon as I had entered the room. And I growled right back at her until Talia shouted from downstairs to be nice to the kids or something. There was absolutely no way I was going to be beaten by a 10 year old with an eye patch though.

I looked around and found a bunch of cardboard swords standing against what I could only assume was the hull of their ship. I picked up two and threw one of them to Laura before assuming a fencing stance I’d seen in movies. I remember how Derek excitedly clapped his hands, absolutely delighted. Either at the fact that his weird uncle was finally joining in on playtime or at the fact someone would defeat the pirate queen so he could finally go back to his coloring books, we might never know.

Seventeen year old me did not have the patience to draw it out though. I only played for a few short minutes before using the sword to simply fling the pillowcase off her head and high into the air for me to catch.

I’ve thought about those few short minutes up in that dusty old attic a lot since I woke up.


	3. 01/03/2020

**_Do you believe in soulmates?_ **

I would be an idiot and a hypocrite not to. You can’t just grow claws and fangs and then pretend like mystical, fantastical things are merely wishful thinking. Besides, it’s easy to smell your soulmate as a werewolf. I can’t not believe in something I already found.

However, mystical and fantastical bonds aside, statistically speaking there is absolutely no way whatsoever that there’s only one soulmate for every one person on this planet. Besides, I already found a second one for myself. Some (you know who you are) would say I’m too vain to doubt myself or second guess my excellent nose.

I found Olivia years ago in that creative writing class. She fit me like I thought no one else could. We would have been nothing but happy if we could have spent our entire lives together. And sometimes I’m still jealous she could and yet took that same chance away from me.

Now that I know I’ve found a second potential soulmate it’s… it all feels different.

At first smelling him, feeling the thrum of possibility, of all that untapped potential in the air whenever he was close felt like a slap in the face. As if he could ever be to me what Olivia and I were to each other. The nerve to claim he was somehow good enough to do the impossible and replace her. It felt like an insult. An insult to her, to me, to everything we were, and everything we could have been.

It faded over time. I even went through a phase of asking ridiculously existential questions. Like what the point of soulmates was if there were so many of them out there. What if I’d met him while Olivia and I were still together? What if I meet someone else after finally taking the plunge with this one? Why does it matter that he could be a perfect fit if there are so many other perfect fits out there?

I can’t believe I’m even saying this, or well, writing this, but it took a LEGO set for me to understand. Isaac with his stupid LEGO obsession. Everyone always thinks of the perfect relationship as two people fitting together like puzzle pieces. Put the two people together and you create a perfect picture. The other side of that is of course that if you never find your soulmate then somehow you’re considered… incomplete. But if there’s multiple possible soulmates for each of us, then that analogy stops making sense. There’s only one single way to make a puzzle fit.

LEGO’s are much more versatile. You can create something out of one set, you can create something out of two sets, you can create something with all the pieces or you can just leave some out. There’s billions upon billions of options. Different ways of putting the pieces together aren’t better than others, it all fits, it all slots together just as easily and perfectly as the right puzzle pieces. You just make a different perfect picture every time.

It’s reassuring to know we all have more than one shot to get it right. It’s reassuring to know that when I try to build something with this person it won’t have to be some twisted imitation of what I built with Olivia. We’ll create something new and different and perfect in its own right. And building takes time. So I don’t feel quite so impatient, quite so frantic now. There’s not the same kind of rush I had with Olivia, trying to be together as quickly as possible because after all, what’s a single puzzle piece going to do on its own? But now I know I can take my time. We can take our time. We can take our time to see all the different ways our LEGO’s fit together. We can take our time choosing the picture we want to make.

We have time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know if you like it!   
> I do actually have a list of journalling prompts I'm following, but if anyone has ideas, I'd be happy to switch some out.   
> Thanks for reading! :D


	4. 01/04/2020

**_The people you most admire_ **

There’s very few people in my life I truly admire. Though a couple do spring to mind. My mother for starters. She’s the example I still think of when I think of how good alphas should lead and good parents should parent. It’s cliché, but all true nonetheless.

Maybe more surprising is Derek, though it really shouldn’t be. Even though as an alpha he doesn’t at all compare to my mother, his heart and his intentions are in the same place. On top of that he managed what I so obviously couldn’t. To put it poetically he never let the fire consume him completely. He got burned, same as I, but he bears the scars with more grace than I could ever dream of.

I hate how people describe someone as “bouncing back from a tragedy”. No one just bounces back from something like that. Derek still struggles, every day. I can still see him second and triple guess his every decision, I will always be able to smell that misplaced guilt he carries with him on top of everything else. But he’s still standing, still living, still leading.

I doubt he’ll ever overcome our past, or move past it, but he manages to live a full, good life despite of it and that seems like an even bigger accomplishment. It’s certainly more than a lot of people can say.

And then of course, there’s Stiles. I barely know where to start. His wits. His perseverance. His bravery. His loyalty. He’s got all of that in spades. He’s loyal and brave to a fault. Both good qualities to have in a pack, especially a pack so new with such fragile bonds. Of course it’s no longer like that, but at the start it definitely wasn’t Derek or Scott who were keeping that ragtag handful of betas together, it was Stiles.

He has some sort of pull people seem to automatically gravitate towards. It’s something about the way he cares for and takes care of his loved ones. It seems so effortless it’s almost annoying. He never fails to make people feel included, which, even though Scott is generally described as the friendly puppy, it isn’t one of Scott’s strong suits. He’s usually too tied up in his own drama to be fully aware of the needs of his pack. Yet Stiles gets accused of not being able to focus.

I don’t need to paint a picture about Stiles’ wits and perseverance. The way he grew and controlled his spark over the past few years is enough to illustrate it.

But maybe what I admire most about him is his humanity. The ease of his empathy right alongside his quick and harsh judgment. In fear of sounding like I’ve got an Oedipus complex, he reminds me of my mother. Werewolves are rarely quite so nuanced. Scott is all empathy. And even though Derek tries, even though he’s grown a lot, he certainly comes from a place that was judge now, ask questions later.

Stiles knows both sides intimately. He understands better than most what humans are capable of, both the good and the bad. Maybe it’s because he grew up as the son of a cop, or maybe life just threw him enough curve balls that he learned how to adapt. Whatever the cause, Stiles is someone who knows exactly how to read people and knows just how to respond to what he finds there. It’s not something easily learned by a born wolf and appears quickly forgotten when bitten.

We rely too much on being the predator. We rely so much on our features that if we’re put in the wrong situation, they can easily turn into bugs. For all our senses can tell us, they really tell us very little. When you’re able to hear every lie it gets harder to determine the importance of it, let alone the reason behind it. When you’re able to smell every emotion it gets easier to skirt around the difficult ones, avoid them instead of knowing how to help someone work through them, or knowing how those emotions will influence their actions.

Stiles at his core is and always will be utterly, completely and admirably human.

But if he’s enchanted this journal so he can find out what I just wrote about him I will tear his throat out, humanity be damned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed!


	5. 01/05/2020

**_Dear future me_ **

Dear future me,

I selfishly hope you're well.

I hope you don’t have the time to reread this journal, I hope you don’t have a mind worrisome enough to still be thinking about this letter from present me and past you.

I hope instead that you're just waking up next to your mate, the pitter patter of tiny feet coming down the hall towards your bedroom door. I know you’re too much of a selfish dick to ease out of bed quietly and intercept the pups before they wake the drooling man next to you, but who knows, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I did manage to turn into a good guy against all expectations.

Who am I kidding, I bet you just encouraged them to jump right on top of him. You should make it up to him with some chocolate chip pancakes. As if he wouldn’t just make you do that anyway.

I do hope that in all of this I’m not being too presumptuous. For the sake of my own tiny shriveled up and blackened husk of a heart I sincerely hope the me from somewhere in between us got his shit together and worked to get that family I’ve just written an entire wistful paragraph about.

Other than a million hopes I don’t want to dwell on for too long, I have a million questions for you.

  * Do I ever finish this diary and find out why he gave it to me?
  * Are you happy?
  * Did you propose? How?
  * Does Disney ever stop making shitty live-action remakes?
  * Did I finally cave and go see Cats the movie?
  * How do I build a pack home?
  * After all the things I’ve already been, who do I become?



Kind regards,

Present me/Past you

P.S.: Say hi to Stiles for me and tell him to throw out that goddamn hoodie already.

****

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking with me here!


	6. 01/06/2020

**_The most surprised you've ever been_ **

As the left hand you’re not supposed to be surprised. It can lead to disastrous consequences. Obviously. You learn to anticipate and expect the worst. Even Kate hadn’t completely come out of left field. I’d warned Talia. It wasn’t at all like Derek to be so secretive. It had come quicker and with more violence than expected, sure, but I wish I could say it had been a complete surprise.

I suppose the answer must be Stiles. Everything about him is unexpected. The fact that he exists in my life at all is probably a good place to start. Or the fact that he refused the bite. Putting aside that I was slightly unhinged at the time, Stiles must have known the bite wasn’t as bad as Scott constantly made it out to be. He knew it would have given him an edge, a very welcome edge to defeat the bad guy of the week (me), save his friends, or at the very least to simply survive in this new-found supernatural world he was so suddenly thrust into.

Now, years later, I can only assume his refusal had something to do with his mother’s illness. The loss of control Scott experiences mustn’t have been great advertising to his best friend. And yet, had I known then what I know now I would have only assumed his mother’s dementia would have been all the more reason to accept the bite. A safety blanket of supernatural healing.

I can’t pretend to completely understand why he didn’t accept the bite. Too much goes on in that boy’s head for any mere mortal to grasp. Since I found out he was a spark (another surprise) I even entertained the thought that it was that dormant part of him that somehow on a base instinctual level influenced his decision at the time. There’s no space for a spark in a werewolf. It could have been any number of reasons why he refused me back then, but all of them just as surprising as the last.

And of course, as mentioned, his spark. It’s quite unusual for one to stay dormant for so long, and for it to manifest so gradually. Even the nogitsune didn’t seem to have triggered its full potential. I doubt he’s reached his full potential already. The fox spirit certainly made him aware of it though, but from then on Stiles seems to have simply found a way to nurture and grow it at his own pace.

Oh, he’s lost control quite a few times, of course he has. That wandering mind of his can’t be very helpful. But at least he didn’t start out with annihilating the entirety of Beacon Hills on accident upon the awakening of his spark. Which is certainly not unheard of in new powerful sparks.

Though I haven’t fully forgiven him for blowing up my table yet.

It was mahogany.

****

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!   
> Tomorrow's another light chapter, but bring tissues on the 8th.


	7. 01/07/2020

**** **_Three things you can’t live without_ **

Let’s be frank here, these are three very material things I would only very much prefer not to live without. If it’s really a literal question, well… that would be boring. I’d have to go with oxygen, water, and basic nutrition. But I am actually very happy to not be a comatose plant anymore, thank you very much.

My Kindle seems like as good a place as any to start. What an invention, honestly. Don’t get me wrong, I love my paper library just as much, but that library just doesn’t fit in my suitcase, let alone in the palm of my hand. The wonder of not having to pick and choose which books to take on a trip is something I will never get over. Stiles and Danny are even digitizing the various tomes on supernatural lore and werewolf history in the vault. So much more convenient.

Another one has to be the coffee maker Derek and Cora got me for Christmas last year. The Jura S8. A truly magnificent machine. Perfect for the coffee-loving werewolf - which they should really include in their advertising campaign. Any bean-to-coffee machine is going to minimize having weird extra flavors in your coffee, but grinding them yourself is just so loud. Talia always refused to have a bean-to-coffee machine in the pack house precisely for that reason. Derek and Cora must have remembered the arguments we used to have over that on an almost daily basis.

But this one is extraordinarily quiet. The fact that Stiles showed me how to control it with my phone so I can have a hot cup waiting for me just when I leave the bed is, dare I say, blissful. I could go on to wax poetic about the Kona coffee beans I got myself as a birthday treat, but I can already hear Stiles’ huffing and scoffing at my being a “snob”. Just because I have supernaturally sensitive taste buds doesn’t mean I’m a snob.

For the last one I’ll have to go with my phone I suppose. I hate to make myself sound even more like a teenager in this diary, but it would be a lie to say anything different. I don’t see the pack all that much in person, so my phone is my main line of communication with most of them.

And with Cora. Whenever she has some decent reception she makes a point of calling about once a week, sometimes even face-timing if the connection isn’t too bad. Though to make sure I don’t go thinking crazy things like her having forgiven me for killing her big sister, she makes sure to call at the worst possible times though, it’s like she’s psychic. Or maybe her pack has a seer in it.

I should probably adjust the order of these items, for the sake of being thorough.

  1. Phone
  2. Kindle
  3. Coffee maker



There, that’s better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Peter Hale Deserves Nice Things 2020


	8. 01/08/2020

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I don't make the prompts.

**_Something you’re feeling guilty about_ **

Eating the last of Derek’s Oreos at the pack meeting yesterday. I did it without thinking, I’m such an idiot. And when he noticed and finally showed his displeasure with those eyebrows, well let me just say that truly went straight to my heart. I don’t think he’ll ever forgive me. I feel truly terrible about it.

Killing his sister also wasn’t my proudest moment.

At the time, I felt nothing. There was no space left in my brain, which, to be fair, wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders either. There was no space to have feelings, no space to process that I cared about this person, or that she was even a person at all, my wolf just saw her as a means to an end. That’s where it starts, you know, the guilt.

It starts right at the moment I just gave up and let my wolf take over. I’d never be able to explain it to anyone who isn’t a werewolf, but even though the wolf is intrinsically tied to you and to your sense of self it’s still a different part of you altogether. Only at the forefront in specific situations. Just to oversimplify it: if the human part is all the parts of you that you use in a job interview, the wolf part is all the parts you use when you’re talking trash in the YouTube comment section.

It’s a simple, crude version of a person boiled down to its very base elements. And when you take away over-complicated reasoning skills, do you know how much easier it is to be in a coma? You stop questioning why you can’t move, if you will ever be able to move again. You stop theorizing about why you’re all alone, you stop assuming everyone left you. You just breathe. Or better yet, let the machines do that for you.

But the wolf’s version of pack is based on proximity and sense memory. It had been five years, and I had heard and felt my alpha die. No part of my wolf saw the alpha as pack, saw Laura as pack. Maybe that’s what I feel guilty about most. Not giving in and letting the wolf take over, not even killing her, but never knowing her enough that my wolf would have had a chance at recognizing her after all that time.

When I try to look back on everything, I can almost rationalize killing her at that time under those circumstances. But then I see Derek, how lost he looked at Christmas despite having his pack right there. And I talk to Cora and I make the mistake of mentioning something from before, it kills me every time she says “I don't remember that”.

It’s killing me.

****

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I refuse to be blamed for this. I tried. There was no other way to answer that prompt.  
> And I warned you all!   
> I did what I could!


	9. 01/09/2020

**_Your favorite Sunday ritual_ **

Sundays are pack days, always have been. And I’m very happy Derek managed to keep it like that in his new pack. So now my favorite Sunday ritual is all of Sunday. It starts by getting up at a semi-reasonable hour and throwing together a good lunch for the pack. Or at least whatever parts of it I can prepare over here and easily take to Derek’s loft. Now that everything has finally quieted down, the pack meetings are a lot more like the pack lunches of before.

Just a relaxed time to eat together and talk about everyone’s week. The betas (and Scott of course) usually take that time to organize some more times to get together somewhere later in the week. One-on-one, just a couple of them, or all of them together. Whatever works. And sometimes when some special event is going to be happening they all collectively decide to take the pack meeting and turn it into a game of “Bother Derek until he finally loses his patience and agrees to join in just to shut everyone up”. I’m not going to lie, those tend to be my favorite. Especially Erica and Stiles can get creative.

Last month they even asked me to join them for the Harry Potter marathons that will be screening at the local drive-in. I’m pretty sure the first one is happening next week but Stiles gets a little paranoid of being able to get everyone a ticket in time. Looking back on it, I almost regret agreeing so easily, I’m sure Stiles had a whole speech prepared on how perfect those marathons would be to brush up on my pop-culture knowledge. Shame he put all that time into it for nothing.

Speaking of Harry Potter, my favorite Sunday ritual from before the fire also happened to be Harry Potter related, or at least it started out that way.

I once made the grave mistake of buying 11 year-old Laura a book for Christmas. To say she wasn’t exactly enthused about it would be the understatement of the decade. I offered to read it to her and her siblings every Sunday night. After three chapters she gave up and left me with Cora and Derek. Cora was really just there so Talia and Elliott could get a break, she probably didn’t understand a thing, but Derek loved it almost as much as I did.

Over time, my mother also started joining our Sunday reading parties in the library. We read the first Harry Potter book, then the next, and the next, and… eventually we had to switch to other books, but we never stopped. No matter how old and “cool” Derek got, he never got too old or too cool for reading parties.

Those moments in the library probably made me feel more part of the pack than any full moon run ever could.

I need to remember not to cry at the movies next week.

These little shits would never let me live it down.

****

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Peter is a nerd.   
> Fight me.


	10. 01/10/2020

**_If you could have dinner with anyone currently alive, who?_ **

Do you want the obvious answer, the sentimental answer or the “oh look a famous person”-answer? I’m feeling generous, so I suppose I’ll just give you all three.

The obvious answer is my mate. Though maybe not that obvious. I would like to have dinner with him, but not just him as a regular acquaintance in my life - even though I doubt that will ever grow old either - but him as my mate. Just the two of us, out on a date, or right here in my den, or anything as as I get to call him mine. But I suppose that’s a boring answer.

I’ll go right ahead with the next boring answer then, the sentimental one. I’d have to go with Cora. It’s been quite a long time now since I’ve seen her. And ever since she’s been living with a nomadic pack, she’s started to get a taste for the finer things in life. It would be a treat to take her to a nice restaurant with me. I bet she’d love that French one in San Francisco I went to last time. Maybe I should try to arrange something for her birthday.

Now the answer I suppose you actually wanted me to give. There’s no doubt about it, my mind instantly landed on one single person and as much as I try, I can’t think of anyone I wouldn’t immediately ditch for a chance to meet dear, sweet Sir Ian McKellen.

I could wax poetic about him for hours honestly. If Stiles ever finds out I’m that much of a fanboy for anyone (let alone for someone Lord of the Rings related) he would never shut up about it. He would probably try his best to introduce me to more fandoms with a ferocity I couldn’t possibly hope to resist.

But getting back on track here. Sir Ian McKellen would simply be legendary to meet. Such a talented man. And the roles he’s played. I’m quite frankly having a hard time finding the words to properly describe him.

I also bet he would be an absolute joy to hang out with. He certainly looks like he knows how to have some good old fashioned fun.

And of course, not to forget, as a kid of the eighties it was just really important to me growing up, to see such an openly gay actor on the screen. This answer wasn’t supposed to be the sentimental one, but there’s no way my life would be the same if he hadn’t been there saying the things he said, doing the things he did, and being absolutely unapologetically him.

So yes, Sir Ian McKellen was a godsend and an icon to me and I would love to thank him for that with a nice dinner.

Possibly candlelit.

You’ll never know.


	11. 01/11/2020

**_What was your favorite toy as a child?_ **

I’m not sure if it was because I grew up in a werewolf pack or just because I grew up in the middle of the woods, but most of what stands out from my childhood is playing outside. I used to spend entire days building camps and forts and tree houses in the woods, running around, hunting, pretending to fight dragons. And whenever the rare treat presented itself that someone would join me in playtime we usually did hide and go seek.

As a kid who grew up in an age without the internet and more importantly without any siblings within my age range, I got particularly good at building my own little fantasy world to spend my time in. A new one every day. It was amazing. Those woods were the best toy I could have ever had, a playground other kids could only dream of.

Though I guess that dodges the question. If I have to pick an actual toy I’d have to go with the various Playmobil sets me (and my sister before me, and my brother before her) had gathered over the years. I loved to disappear up in the attic for hours on end just making up stories for every little person. It could take weeks just to develop the backstory of each of my characters and then the rest of the rainy, no good, very bad winter I spent tying all the various characters and their individual stories together in some way.

It’s sort of weirdly cruel when I think about it. Spending all winter giving these tiny people friends and families, interests and hobbies, ups and downs, giving them lives and then at the first sign of spring I’d throw them back in the box and forgot all about them for another year.

Board games were another good one. I remember Monopoly and risk in particular though I’m not sure I actually understood the point of the games at that age. Talia always got fed up with how I just tried to put houses on every possible square in Monopoly, even the ones I didn’t own.

And then Johnathan got a Gameboy. Dear lord, I’d almost forgotten about that. He was obsessed with that thing, our father nearly threw it out of the window on more than one occasion. Whenever Johnathan was home from college I used to spend hours just watching him play Pokémon on it, only watching, but I loved it. And then he finally offered to teach me how to play.

That was ages ago, I haven’t thought that far back in a long time. He got a PlayStation too later. I was probably 15 at the time. He hadn’t even met Linda yet at that point. I particularly was a sucker for Ratchet & Clank and Spyro.

I wonder if they still make those games?

Stiles made me get a PlayStation since he spends so much time hanging out her now. So I might as well get some games of my own.

I can hide them in my sock drawer.

He doesn’t need to know.

I wouldn’t want to encroach on his status as the resident nerd.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tomorrow is all about dances with wolves!


	12. 01/12/2020

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, Dances with wolves

**_Your first dance_ **

Our mother insisted on homeschooling all of us up until high school, which means I’m saved from recounting what would have undoubtedly been a very awkward middle school dance. Instead I present to you the awkward tale of my moon party.

It was already a dated tradition when I turned sixteen, but my father argued all werewolf traditions were dated, which was actually a fair point. Now, as much as “moon party” sounds like a period party, it was a gender neutral coming of age celebration for the sixteen year old werewolf. It was held on your birthmoon closest to your birthday that year. If you were born on a full moon, it would be on the full moon happening closest to your birthday and you’d enjoy a beautiful and well-lit evening with all your loved ones.

If you were born on a new moon, well tough luck. (It used to be a bad omen anyway to be born on a new moon, and let’s not even mention the poor eclipse babies).

Tradition also said that you were to give the first dance to someone from an allied pack. In ye olden days it used to be a part of the courting ritual, to give your first dance to your intended or at least to someone you wanted to court. In those days it mattered a lot which person you chose. You had to toe a line between trying to ask a person with a good position in their pack (a future alpha, a second, a left hand, at least one of the top betas) and not choosing someone too high ranking that they couldn’t possible accept your offer. Oh the shame that would bring on your pack.

Somehow that part of the tradition so reminiscent of medieval court behavior hadn’t completely disappeared yet. On the regular teen wolf there was always a weird pressure to choose someone important, to reach above your own station. Bagging an alpha or a second would give you bragging rights till eternity. I remember how, during the months leading up to my moon celebration, even my mother thought it such a big deal she would subtly mention the names of who was intended to inherit the alpha power in each pack.

In the end it was actually Talia who took me aside a couple of days before to reassure me that it didn’t matter as long as I chose someone who I thought was worth dancing with, who I thought I could have fun with. Bonus points if you chose someone who didn’t end up stepping on your toes five times.

I ended up asking an adorable blond beta from Satomi’s pack. He had the prettiest green eyes and was blushing from the moment I walked up to him till the moment the song ended. I never thought the party would be a big deal. And then with my mother bothering me so much about my first dance I was certain it would just be one big disappointment. But it was more than I thought it would be. That dance certainly wasn’t the last time we saw each other. I found out that his pretty green eyes weren’t even the best part about him.

But I don’t particularly feel like writing all of those juicy details down on paper.

My second dance is also noteworthy. The traditional waltz where your present alpha gets the chance to give you or promise you to another. It’s usually bittersweet, and maybe it was at the time, but all I remember today is how proud my sister was to accept me in her pack. I caught her bragging about my ‘ferocity’ to a young new alpha later that night.

Though maybe that was simply to get him to stop flirting with her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tomorrow's chapter is going to be another depressing one, sooorrryyyy (but not really sorry)


	13. 01/13/2020

**_What would you do if you knew you could not fail?_ **

Travel back in time and fix it.

In other news, I spent all of yesterday finishing up the photo albums. I suppose yesterday’s journaling prompt made me feel particularly nostalgic. Whereas today’s prompt mostly just made me feel powerless. Which might have contributed to my calling Stiles. I hadn’t actually expected him to come over that quickly. I should have known better. He always drops everything at the slightest sign that he’s needed by someone he cares about. And isn’t that a foreign thought?

No one reads a room like Stiles does. Took one look at the diary, closed of course, on the coffee table, he saw the opened photo album and he went off to make a pot of tea. We didn’t talk much. We just sat on the sofa. Well, we sat peacefully, quietly, until it dawned on me that the Stiles I know would’ve asked the question already. The fact that he hadn’t… Long story short, I may have accused him of placing some sort of magical bug on my diary.

He was surprisingly patient with me. Apparently he keeps up with the prompts so he can “make sure I’m okay”, but the spell he put on the journal was for secrecy. No one but me can read it. If anyone tries, they’ll just see pages upon pages of self-portraits. Because of course Stiles finds that hilarious.

The rest of the day, Stiles was just there. He played a game while I read, he played a game while I took care of my plants, he played a game while I read some more. And while I cooked dinner, he took a seat at the kitchen table and talked about his latest research deep dive into trolls. Not the internet kind. The live under the bridge and eat your kids kind. (Turns out they don’t eat your kids, trolls are largely vegetarian, they just know a lot of creatures who’d pay solid gold to get a fresh kid.)

I brought up the photo albums while the pasta was boiling, I didn’t show him the pictures, figured we’d save that for a pack night. He thought it was a good idea to give them to Derek for his birthday, as long as I had some pictures for myself as well. There are still some photographs left in the box, they’ll stay there. Until one day, inevitably, I suddenly find a space on the wall that’s just perfect for them.

So anyway, it was nice spending the day with him. It had been a while. It wasn’t as easy going as usual, but it’s his fault for giving me the diary with the depressing list of journaling prompts.

Dinner was nice too. We had mac and cheese, first time I made it since the fire. He loves it almost as much as Laura though, so it was worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh look it's a Stiles!


	14. 01/14/2020

**_What makes you unique?_ **

My ability and willingness to do whatever it takes to keep my pack safe. The same could probably be said for any decent enforcer or left hand in any pack. But I suppose those qualities have been elevated to an absurd extent in me. I’m not even sure that’s always a good thing. And lord knows it’s not out of altruism.

It's out of a pure selfish desperation. What happened before can’t happen again because I won’t survive it. All those pack bonds snapping one by one by one… a mate bond breaking on the same night. Sometimes I think it wasn’t the coma that made me lose it, sometimes I’m sure I lost it right there in that basement with my pack dying around me. If I ever have to feel a bond break again, I will lose my mind. For good this time. There’s no way I would even want to go through that with my mind intact.

I’m too desperate. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for my pack, for my mate.

I’m too desperate. I jump the gun these days. Before I knew what it felt like I would still do whatever it took, but I’d be more clever about it. I’d take my time and make sure I was doing the right thing, I’d ask questions before I got my claws out, I’d investigate before tearing into their throats. Now there’s no hesitance whatsoever. If they’re after my pack, I’ll be after their throats. It’s probably a good thing that Stiles is still level headed enough to go after the answers.

There’s a second reason I suppose as to what makes me different to most left hands. I don’t have to hide. Of course there wasn’t the same level of desperation to not end up alone before the fire, but there was another difference too. To put it bluntly, my previous pack cared about me. They included me in everything. My mother and my sister were both alphas who wouldn’t let anyone treat their left hands with anything but utter respect. But they also made sure their left hands deserved the position, that they wouldn’t go off the rails at the slightest hint of danger. In return, I asked questions first and investigated every angle, didn’t get my hands dirty when I didn’t absolutely have to. I killed, of course, but they were quick deaths, painless.

I’m already on the fringes of this pack, so what does it matter that I cross the line? That I jump the gun? That I torture for a quick answer? They already think the worst of me. I already did my worst. Anything that happens now is just ‘Peter being Peter’. It doesn’t matter if I’m cruel, if I torture or kill or don’t give the bodies the burial they deserve. No one expects me to be decent, so what’s the point? It’s so much easier to protect a pack when you don’t have to try to protect everyone’s sensitive sensibilities.

So much safer for everyone involved. And if that means I’ll be standing at the sidelines looking in on a pack I’ll never really be a part of, so be it.

At least there’ll be a pack to look at.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slightly later than usual, but you know, life.   
> Anyway, Peter's really not having the best days, but what else is new?   
> How are you guys?


	15. 01/15/2020

**_Tell us about your favorite teacher_ **

We were all homeschooled for most of our lives, and my mother was an amazing teacher. She taught me my love for books. But I suppose that’s a rather cheap cop-out for the prompt.

Later in college there was a creative writing class I took. My father insisted I shouldn’t waste my intelligence and potential or whatever. I didn’t have much of a choice in colleges, if I couldn’t use my brains for the good of the pack then what was even the point in having them in the first place? So I went to study law. I just took as many English electives as possible.

Anyway, I took this creative writing class. Taught by professor Albers, this middle aged guy who constantly looked exhausted and miserable. Until he started teaching. I think letting him teach people a topic he was passionate about, was the only way to wake him up. He was absolutely great, bonkers, but great. He also taught English Literature and boy was that a ride. He very much had an appreciation for the classics, but he didn’t take any shit from the original authors.

He wasn’t much of a fan of “the greats” getting praised for being racist misogynists who happened to be able to hold a pen. Where my mother taught me to love books, Mr. Albers taught me to contextualize them and judge them accordingly. His attitude towards lit was refreshing, and probably very important to hear as an asshole law student.

He was a no bullshit man, even in his creative writing class, which so often turn out to be such a bullshit elective. If your writing had its flaws, which it always did, he never hesitated to point them out. No matter who you were or how much your parents were donating to the university. He never did it in a demeaning way, never got into that holier-than-thou attitude so many other professors tend to comfortably fester in. His critiques were always accompanied by a positive comment to soften the blow, always accompanied by actually useful advice on how to improve, and always accompanied by encouragement because “everyone can be a writer, there’s readers out there for any book and any author”.

He's the reason I never stopped writing. And he’s the reason I met Olivia. We were both in his creative writing class. At one point he paired us up for a project. I’m still convinced he knew exactly what he was doing somehow. I doubt we were the only single people who left his class as a couple. His success rate as a matchmaker was quite legendary on campus. Now I’m thinking back on it, I’m starting to suspect it was a little more than an uncanny ability to read people.

He is my favorite teacher, because he’s the only one I still think about. Any time I buy a new notebook (or get a diary for Christmas), any time I’m in a bookstore… I suppose it’s a bit weird how much he influenced me, especially considering he wouldn’t even recognize me if we walked into each other. He was a truly wonderful teacher.

And I suppose it didn’t hurt that he set me up with my mate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look! I can actually write chapters that aren't completely depressing!


	16. 01/16/2020

**_Three favorite TV shows_ **

I must admit that I’ve never been a big television fan. In general I love books and movies a lot more as a medium, their stories seem to be more contained instead of ever-expanding. But I do like the… the sense of community you can get from TV shows. So many people, all watching the same thing at the same time, all invested in the same characters, all curious about what could possibly happen next, I do truly enjoy that. That watercooler effect certain TV shows cause, much more so than movies and books. Though I suppose that’s been shifting somewhat with the rise of streaming platforms.

I don’t even really need to think about my list. There are really only three shows that immediately spring to mind:

  * Lost
  * Avatar the Last Airbender
  * The Big Fat Quiz of the Year



Olivia loved watching TV. She couldn’t for the life of her sit through a single movie, but she was bingeing TV shows before it was even a thing. Always watching and rewatching. She was also a complete sucker for utterly deplorable reality television. I couldn’t stand that. So she seemed to always be on the look out, trying to find a show we could watch together. And the best thing, by far, that she ever came up with was Lost. I’ve never watched a show with more of a watercooler effect than Lost. It was nothing short of spectacular. The morning after an episode had aired, you’d hear everyone talking and blabbering on about it, speculating left and right. And Olivia’s face at the ending was simply gold.

Unsurprisingly the next one on the list is one that our dear Stiles made me watch. It didn’t take him any time to decide he just had to do the right thing, step up, and take my cultural re-education in his own very capable hands. And instead of just giving me a replay of everything I’d missed during my ‘five year beauty sleep’ as he likes to refer to it, he started with something from well before the fire ever happened. It was obviously incredible. But more than that it was exactly what I’d needed to see at that time.

Just like Lost it gave me a sense of community, though not with a community at large. I suppose a sense of belonging and understanding is a better way of putting it. Of course it made me closer to Stiles, it’s really the first thing anyone of the pack did to reach out to me. But in the back of my mind I always had little Cora who had kept telling everyone who came within hearing range – which isn’t even that close for werewolves – to watch it and thank her. Sassy little shit even dressed as Katara on Halloween, making Derek dress up as Sokka. And instead of trick or treat she did a lovely game of “treat or watch ATLA with me”. She got more candy that year than any other year. If only I’d have realized it was actually worth a watch, I wouldn’t have had to give her my Snickers.

And lastly there’s The Big Fat Quiz of the Year. I’m not entirely sure you can count an annual quiz a TV show, but my diary, my rules. It’s brilliant, comedy gold. British panel shows, sign me the fuck up. More importantly, it’s turned into this thing I have with Derek. He just decided one day that he’d try to catch me up on the years I’d missed, and quiz nerd he is, he thought that would be the way to do it. Not that it wasn’t, it’s just that I know a surprising amount of random British news and little to none about American news from that time period. And now he always calls when it comes out and we watch it together. Just us for a night. It’s good to have my alpha’s attention and care for a couple of hours.

It's comforting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're halfway through the first month!   
> What are your favorite tv-shows? Because I could use a rec.


	17. 01/17/2020

**_What kind of day are you having?_ **

A truly good kind of day.

I woke up to two texts, one from Erica and one from Stiles, both to remind me of the Harry Potter marathon. As if I could ever forget. I texted back and forth with the both of them over breakfast, Erica had to go into work first and since she’d reminded me that I promised to get the snacks, she probably got what she was after. The conversation with Stiles lasted a little longer, about where we both were in our Harry Potter reread, about what I remembered of the movies… It might have just been some jam on toast, but it was a great breakfast.

On Fridays the rag-tags usually go out together, so somewhere along the line Fridays became my me-days. Sure, most of the days I just spent with me, but I’m usually doing something useful at the very least. Fridays are the days where I make a fruit salad just for me. The days where I do nothing but read if that strikes my fancy. The days where I soak in the bath for hours on end, usually with a book and said fruit salad by my side. Sometimes I even get out the ice cream. I’ve been known to buy a bottle of champagne for Fridays. It might have started as a way to distract myself, but it’s become a tradition I don’t ever want to break, because it’s really lovely to enjoy the finer things in life during some peace and quiet. And of course, taking the time to properly jerk off in the bath tub is a bonus.

I’d finished the Prisoner of Azkaban by the time I managed to drag myself out of the tub. It’s just a wonderful read, isn’t it? I suppose if I had to choose a favorite from the series, it would be the third one.

Cora also called, sometime in the afternoon when it wasn’t inconvenient for once. It had been a long time since I last heard from her, it was a relief to hear her voice. And she even apologized for not having been able to reach me before that, can you imagine? I’d be worried if she hadn’t been a complete and utter asshole during the rest of her call.

And then the movies. The whole pack was there at the drive in theater. We’d all brought blankets and everyone got popcorn. Derek got everyone drinks and made sure to switch up which car he was in for each movie, so more people could get some quality alpha time. It’s good to see how much he’s grown over the past couple of years.

The best part was Stiles. He picked me up with his jeep so he could “make sure I soaked up all the culture”, which was “the responsibility he had to take as my pop-culture advisor”. I think he was full of shit and wanted to save me a seat, didn’t want me to sit alone in my car all night. He’s subtle like that. It was amazing, to see the movies with the whole pack there, to see these movies with my mate right by my side, to laugh together, and to be together.

It was magical.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look! He's happy!


	18. 01/18/2020

**_How do you cope with worry?_ **

It’s quite simple to be honest: I deal with the thing that’s worrying me. I fix it so I can merrily continue on with my life. If, for whatever reason I am incapable of doing so, well… I try to distract myself if my rational brain knows it’s an unfounded worry. The latter doesn’t often happen though. There’s always plenty of very valid reasons around to cause worry. I suppose less so these days.

Those kind of supernatural threat related reasons are usually quite straightforward to deal with, or at least they should be, if it weren’t for Scott’s annoying morals. How that kid still doesn’t understand just how bad the world and the people in it can get is honestly beyond me. It would be so much easier, so much safer for everyone involved if he would just let me deal with these things, if he would just trust me. But I suppose even I must admit that’s quite a lot to ask of anyone. Even my dear nephew.

It's why I try my best to go behind their backs as much as I possibly can. I simply don’t have time to wait until Scott and Derek have come up with some moronic plan to capture our oh so precious and fragile enemies in a way that doesn’t harm anyone. I swear that kid has less of a self-preservation instinct than Stiles, it’s utterly absurd. If anything his instincts should have improved when I gave him the bite, but alas.

So that’s the easy way to cope with worry: deal with it head on. But, as I just mentioned, Scott isn’t a big fan of that approach. Whenever word of a new baddie reaches Scott or Derek first, whenever I’m too slow to go behind their backs and deal with the threat before the alphas are even aware of it, I don’t cope particularly well.

Every single time without fail, one of my alphas will order me to stay out of it. No matter how many times that happens, I’ll never get used to it, to be made so disgustingly powerless right when I’m needed most. But there’s no arguing with two stubborn alphas. When I’m made to stand back, I do exactly that. I stand at the back of the pack if we go out to face the threat as a united front. I stand at the place where the weakest link belongs. My rightful place as the pack’s enforcer taken up by Erica on Derek’s left.

She’s as strong as the rest of us, an amazing fighter in her own right, but I must admit that it felt incredibly humiliating to relinquish my place to her the first time. I belong there as a left hand, right next to my alphas on the front lines, it’s a place that I earned. But I didn’t put up any kind of fuss the second time I was pushed from my place. Because there’s a thing or two to be said for standing in the back line, for standing right behind your pack, to be the force to close them in between their alphas and myself. I have a much better view of the fight in the back, I can still protect the betas when necessary, the alphas can protect each other. 

I was never meant to be a right hand, I was never intended to be a defensive fighter, but it certainly eases my worry when I’m in a position where I can watch everyone’s back.

A position where I can protect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This got more sad than intended, but what else is new?


	19. 01/19/2020

**_Places you enjoy visiting_ **

Derek’s loft. It’s nowhere near the pack house they deserve, but I suppose the sentiment is there somehow. Though I wonder how sentiment is going to solve the fact that there’s absolutely no space to host a proper pack dinner. Well, that’s not entirely true. Technically when all the furniture is moved to the hallway everyone can be seated but once that’s done, there’s no way of moving around again. So that leaves the two people sitting at the end of the improvised table to move to the kitchen and back again. And god forbid anyone needs to use the facilities. It’s been impossible ever since Erica’s pup started stomping on her bladder. So they’ve actually decided to split up the pack dinner.

Pathetic. Utterly pathetic. Just because you have two alphas doesn’t mean you can just split the pack up for bonding moments like this. I don’t see how this will last, especially with the pups on the way! It’s ridiculous! And where is Erica supposed to give birth? In a hospital so she can flash her eyes and claws and fangs at every incompetent doctor? Or at Deaton’s? At the vet? It’s not going to be the loft I can tell you that much, that place is not suited to bring a child into the world. I suppose the McCall residence will do, but it’s not the pack’s place. She deserves a safe space. And so will Kira in due time.

But I digress. I do enjoy visiting the loft because it’s the regular meetup place, every pack member’s scent is ingrained in the space. Even if it is so utterly deficient.

Another space I enjoy visiting is the library. They moved into a new building two years ago. It’s very spacious and clean and bright now. The people are nice too, easily charmed. Ethel always keeps the newspapers aside for me on Saturday mornings. If I give her the right kind of smile she’ll even let me take my coffee into the reading area. Lydia’s recently taken to joining me there on Saturdays, it’s… new. I’m not quite sure how she even knew to find me there in the first place. Or why. She has yet to say a single word. It’s rather alarming how she still manages to befuddle me after all these years.

I just realized that today’s prompt was probably more meant to be along the lines of a foreign place, or at the very least something not within Beacon Hill’s borders. I rather like the comforts of our territory though, especially since Stiles put his wards up. It feels safe.

I suppose Satomi’s territory is quite nice too. They have this river running through their woods which makes it look almost idyllic when the sun shines through the treetops. It’s not too far either, and they’ve been our ally ever since my mother was still the Hale alpha. I’m almost as familiar with their territory than with our own. I never mind visiting there for meetings, it’s close enough to Beacon Hills that I don’t feel like I’m constantly being pulled backwards. Because with such fragile bonds, it keeps feeling like they’ll stretch too thin and snap whenever I go too far from my alphas.

And if I’ve still interpreted this prompt wrongly, then I’ll just be done with it and answer Paris. Despite its smell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for uploading later than usual, it completely slipped my mind.   
> Tomorrow's entry probably will be later as well because I have an exam in the morning. 
> 
> See you then!


	20. 01/20/2020

**_What’s your favorite time of day?_ **

The time right after dinner is done, preferably with clean up taken care of already. It’s the perfect time to relax. I usually talk to you then, unless I had a nightmare and woke up at an ungodly hour, I’ve found that writing calms me down, helps me put things into perspective. Even if these journaling prompts hit a little too close to home sometimes, it’s a very effective way to deal with whatever I just woke up from. Because even though they hit too close to home, they have a way of making me remember the good stuff too.

I prefer doing my daily writing in the evenings though, just because it makes me remember the good things. Those are comforting thoughts to have in my head when I’m trying to get to sleep. And if I turn the armchair to face the balcony window, I can see the moon as it rises. Oh, I know that sounds corny, but who cares? I’m a werewolf, I enjoy the moon, it’s pretty.

Of course there’s also the fact that if Stiles comes for a visit or gives me a ring, it’s usually around that time too. It’s nice, it’s really nice. A tumbler of whiskey in one hand and my phone in the other. It’s become so familiar it must be a routine by now. I’m not quite sure what to think of the fact that Stiles has made it part of his evening routine to talk to me. Well, I’m pretty sure, but it wouldn’t do to get my hopes up now, would it?

The other reason is probably something Stiles would find creepy in some way, though it’s absolutely in no way like that.

I come from a big pack, most of the pack living under one roof. There were always people around, a lot of people. I used to despise the noise when I needed to get some work done, but the noise is probably what I miss most. Or maybe miss is the wrong word. The lack of noise is what makes me most uncomfortable once I inevitably notice it. There’s a reason I live in an apartment complex, and it’s not the lack of funds. It’s not even that a house would be too much space for just one lone wolf. It’s the people living all around me, it feels strangely comforting.

During the day is when it’s most quiet. The children are at school, the adults are at work and sometimes the silence can get suffocating. Around dinner time everyone trickles back in, there’s the noise of parents calling to come to the table, the noise of children whining about having to eat the green stuff on their plate, the noise of sighing parents trying to deal with their children’s bullshit when they’d only just gotten off work. Those noises are no fun.

It's what comes after dinner that makes it almost feel like I’m not quite so alone in this place. Sure, everyone’s just going about their business in their respective apartments, and everyone is just doing dumb relaxing things, but if everyone’s relaxing, the annoying noises calm down too. There’s loving banter between the siblings two doors down, an old couple is watching the news and reminiscing about the good old days, a mom is humming a song down the hall to get her kid to go to sleep.

People’s lives are at their most personal, at their most private and somehow at their most relatable when the day is coming to a close. Sometimes I feel like an emotional vampire, feeding off these people’s private moments, but it’s not like I’m listening in on their conversations. It’s just that it’s… comforting to hear people getting comfortable at the end of the day. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so I know I'm technically posting this 8 mins past midnight, but I've had a daaay.  
> I should get back to my regular-ish posting time tomorrow!   
> Sorry for the delay, hope you enjoy the chapter anyway. (I should do poetry)


	21. 01/21/2020

**_What do you envy?_ **

A normal human life.

Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoy being a werewolf and every single perk that comes with it. Never getting sick, an extended life, super senses, super strength, and I’m not going to sit here and pretend like my lovely metabolism is anything but supernatural. Werewolf privileges are nothing to scoff at, obviously. And I haven’t even mentioned the culture yet. Pack life, traditions, history… For all of the eye-rolling I did at werewolf traditions when I was a teenager, there’s really something nice about having a culture that sets you apart from the majority of the population. It does a lot to strengthen the bonds within a family, a pack. It makes me feel closer to my parents and the people we’ve lost every time we have a full moon get together.

But I’m not sure it’s worth the cost of a life in the supernatural. I’d give a whole lot in exchange for a mere human life, with mere human problems. I’m not quite sure if I’d give up being a werewolf, if I’d give up being me for it, but I would sure give a lot. The risks of a human life are so low scale, so… menial. Diseases, accidents… it’s not an easy life, but the risk of losing everyone, everything at once is so abysmally low.

I envy the mother two doors down who’s worrying about her three year old having the sniffles. I envy the father next door who’s worrying about his sixteen year old son sneaking out most nights just to sneak into an apartment further down to meet his boyfriend. I envy the couple worrying about setting up their wills because they might die of old age in a couple of years.

Dying of old age. Imagine that.

But then there’s the widow at the end of the hall, who talks to no one but her parrot all day. Or the twenty something year old on the floor above, who just moved here all by herself and barely even calls her parents once a month because she’s so determined to be independent. And the blue collar worker who I have yet to hear speak to anyone, always leaving for work at 8 and back home at 6 on the dot so he can pop a ready meal in the microwave.

Humans are so lonely and solitary. Even at the fringes of my pack, I still have a pack. I have Stiles and somehow I still have Derek and Cora after everything. I’m not under any delusion that I would have any of these people if it weren’t for the fact that I’m pack, or at the very least pack adjacent. If I ever truly need help, someone of the pack would jump in, not for me but for the whole of the pack. You protect the whole by taking care of the individuals. Werewolves know what strength in numbers truly means and we stick together even if it is out of selfish reasons sometimes.

I might not be anyone’s favorite, I might not be fully trusted, I might be lonely, but as long as I’m technically part of the pack, I’ll never truly be on my own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to regular posting hours! This is definitely my favorite part of my morning routine :D   
> So the prompt was another serious downer, but I tried my best to have it not be completely depressing.


	22. 01/22/2020

**_Things you always did with your dad when you were little_ **

By the time I was born, it was already clear that Talia was alpha material and Jonathan would be her right hand. Even though Jonathan was the oldest, he didn’t have a single cell in his body that was meant to lead a pack. All of this of course meant that my father was certain I was born to be an enforcer just like him. He didn’t like to be proven wrong, so he made sure to raise me as a left hand no matter what. I thought being like him, being his precious little prodigy would make us closer somehow, but that never happened.

The things we did together were purely “educational”. I can’t remember going off alone with my father to do something fun. Every night for as long as I can remember, he took me into his study and he’d tell me everything I would ever need to know. Our pack’s history, our allied packs’ histories, our history with enemies, with hunters, every deal we ever made. Or at least that what it seemed like. He mostly seemed to focus on whenever a treaty went wrong, whenever someone got stabbed in the back one way or other. I suppose I can see how that would be important to teach a left hand, you need to be ready for every possibility, for every wrong turn. But it’s different with a child. Of course you teach your children not to go with the strange man offering sweets from the back of his white van, but you don’t tell them the world is out to get them, to get everyone they’ve ever loved.

I was so jealous of Talia and Jonathan. Whenever my father was teaching me about how people betray each other and hurt each other, Talia and Jonathan were off with my mother and my aunt. All four of them together, the current alpha and right hand with their respective successors. I don’t know what they were taught, but I know that it was different enough to cause a rift between our parents. My mother wasn’t very pleased to find her six year-old was having nightmares because he thought the neighboring pack would come in the night and slaughter his family. But my mother was the alpha, my father was the left hand, they each had their kid to train. If my mother was letting Talia “slack off” on her fighting training, my father had to train me twice as hard.

Eventually I grew out of the nightmares, I even stopped resenting my father for his training methods and my mother for allowing it. But I never understood, still don’t understand, why they trained us separately. It’s customary for the alpha couple to get at minimum three children, it’s enough for a solid backbone to a future pack. If the core of the pack grows up together, they’re as close as can be, or at least they’re supposed to be.

So why raise us separately? I was already so much younger than my siblings, there was already a gap there. They never trained me up with the alpha of my future pack, with her right hand. It’s like they raised me to stand at the sidelines. Talia did her best not to let that happen, and even though we never talked about it, I know she didn’t agree with our parents’ training methods. When Cora was born she took me aside, even though I was still a teenager, she came to me instead of going to our father. We talked about training her children, our pack’s successors, together. Never in a million years could I have predicted she’d want me so closely involved in her kid’s lives.

The first time I was ever shown what it would truly mean to be the left hand was when Talia, Jonathan and I all sat down together to talk together about how we all saw the future of the Hale pack. All those nights in my father’s study, all those weekends of grueling training, and the most important thing I learned was when my alpha told me to teach her daughter how to protect the pack. How to protect the pack from having to make tough calls, how to protect the pack’s conscience, all with the help of her alpha and the right hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm sorry, this one's a little disjointed.


	23. 01/23/2020

**_What would you do if you were a teacher?_ **

Teach, presumably, dumb question.

I suppose this prompt is really asking what I’m good enough at to teach others and what I’m passionate enough about to do it for a considerable period of time. So it would either have to be some sort of literature course or a culinary class I guess.

Putting aside the fact that I’d be a pretty terrible teacher because teenagers and college students are highly annoying and I don’t have the patience for either of them, I wouldn’t necessarily mind being a literature teacher. It’s one of those classes where you could technically get out of the actual teaching aspect of it. Set up a reading list and a schedule and discuss it in class. Not that that’s a particularly easy job, but it’s also not an exact science. I can teach my opinions, and if there’s anything I’m good at, it’s sharing my opinions. Loudly.

I don’t mean to make it seem like I’d do it because it’s easy. I’m sure I’d get bored of it eventually, but the idea of discussing some books that are interesting to me with like-minded people is very appealing. It’s the one thing I miss from my college days. I miss arguing about books. I miss doing a deep dive into one single book for a month, for so long I’m that close to being sick of it and throwing it out the window. I miss having someone tell me that my interpretation of a book isn’t the end all be all, there’s something satisfying to being challenged by a peer.

I should just join a book club, I think the comic book store might organize a science-fiction fantasy book club. I’m pretty sure Kira mentioned it at some point.

As for the culinary classes, I might actually be good at those. Never mind that, I’m definitely good at those. After all if I can teach Scott of all people to cook, that must prove some of my talents. Granted, it was only one dish, a simple lasagna for his and Kira’s anniversary last year, but he still knows how to make it without having the kitchen explode.

It would be a really rewarding class to teach, unlike some theoretical cerebral literature course. There would be tangible results for everyone involved, and it’s a very useful skill to learn. The more I think about it, the more it appeals to me, teaching someone a craft you’re good at must be fun. Maybe I could teach Derek. Lord knows he could use it. I don’t want to know what he survives on during the days I don’t bring him my left overs.

I could probably make it sound like a good alpha should know how to provide for his pack. Well, in any case I’m not going to tell him that I’d appreciate him indulging my new hobby, or, god forbid, that I want to spend more time with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there, thanks for reading again!  
> Let me know what you think!


	24. 01/24/2020

**_How would you like to make the world a better place?_ **

I don’t deal in the impossible, the supernatural is crazy enough.

Though I suppose “better” just means it has to be somewhat improved, not necessarily alright. I still don’t know where to start. Climate change? World hunger? Wars? Gun laws? Extremists? The list is too long… and frankly I’m not quite sure I actually care.

Of course I care that the next generations of our pack will inherit a broken planet and will have to deal with all that entails, but no amount of magic can just… fix it. There’s no point in dealing with these big what-ifs, there’s no point in dwelling on what I would do because there’s no way I actually can. It’s frustrating and depressing and I didn’t sign up to feel helpless today.

So I’ll go for a run tonight. I’ll go for a long run to cover the entire perimeter. I’ll check Stiles’ wards, I’ll check the loft and Scott’s place and the sheriff’s place, I’ll check the station and the hospital, I’ll run the entire night to find the Nemeton if I have to. I can’t fix the world, there’s no fixing an entire planet, no matter how much you dream of bettering the world.

But I’ll make sure my pack is safe, that my territory is safe. I’m at least somewhat qualified for that.

I’ll just have to be careful that no one sees me “creeping” outside their windows again tonight. (Although I don’t understand how patrolling our territory can in any way be considered “creeping”, Stiles.)

Tonight I’ll run the perimeter, tomorrow I’ll go grocery shopping so I can feed the pack and maybe show Derek his way around the kitchen so he can help for once, and on Sunday I’ll make sure to google some dumb dad jokes so I can make Stiles smile.

I can’t begin to better the world, but I do my share to better my world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woops, slightly late again. The prompt was haaaard.


	25. 01/25/2020

**_What’s something you love about yourself?_ **

My humor, my wits, my tenacity, my intelligence, my cunning. There. Done. Well that was another short prompt, wasn’t it? I’m not about to write an entire diary entry on how great I am, because if it needs explaining, then how great is it anyway?

And it simply doesn’t matter what I love or hate about myself, does it? It’s about what other people think. Yeah, yeah, that’s the exact opposite of what everyone always says. Everyone keeps blabbering on about how it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of you, but I have never heard a bigger lie and I was a criminal lawyer. You can love every single thing about yourself and be an enormous asshole, in fact, most assholes start out by loving every single thing about themselves and not caring about what other people think.

You have to care. Of course, take it with a grain of salt, but how can you become a decent person without any outside input? Consider it a peer review process. Every time someone calls you an asshole, there’s a good chance there’s at least some truth to it. The more it happens, the higher that chance is. Now, I’m fully aware I can be an asshole, in fact, I’m an asshole the majority of the time. That is what I’ve learned through a rigorous peer review process of about 35 years. I’ve learned what my strengths and weaknesses are. I’ve learned which parts of myself people like and stick around for and which parts could drive people away.

Obviously I haven’t changed all those parts, but I’m aware of them and I’ve taken it under careful consideration. I’ve weighed up the pros and cons of becoming less ruthless or less cruel or more friendly or more approachable. But I’ve decided I’d rather be an asshole with a living pack than be your friendly neighborhood lone wolf who let everyone die because he didn’t want to do whatever was necessary to protect his loved ones.

There’s no reason to change yourself if you don’t think it’s worth it, but my point is that there’s a point to the peer review process of life. The point isn’t to change everything about yourself and to just become a better person for yourself. It’s because you need to know how people perceive you and what people like about you to make sure you can keep people around you. There’s no point in loving everything about yourself when you’ve got no one else to share you with. What’s the point in trying to better yourself when there’s no one around to appreciate it and give you a hug when you’ve done well?

Life is all about what other people think of you, because life is all about other people.

But I don’t care what anyone says, my pancakes are the best, Kira’s got nothing on me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Made it just in time! And I'm not looking forward to writing tomorrow's prompt /o\ bring tissues?


	26. 01/26/2020

**_Your saddest memory._ **

Stiles showed up this morning, right when I was sipping my first cup of coffee. Stiles doesn’t do mornings, especially on a Sunday, but he figured I needed some emotional support for the prompt. Which wasn’t very reassuring and is why I’m at the kitchen table trying to not get overwhelmed and he’s sitting on the couch, keeping to himself and “keeping quiet” while making an insane amount of noise. It’s annoying and distracting and it’s highly uncomfortable to talk or write about such personal things while someone else is in my space. So I suppose I’ll just get it over with as soon as possible.

My saddest memory. You’d think that would be obvious, but it’s not. The thing people don’t seem to understand about tragedy is that it’s not a moment, it’s a lifetime that comes afterwards. Tragedy isn’t a feeling either, it’s a million feelings altogether. It’s overwhelming, it’s all-consuming but it’s not sad. Not when you’re in it.

My memory of the fire is a tragedy. That memory is a lot of things. It’s chaos, it’s terror, it’s noise, it’s anger, it’s heat, it’s helplessness, it’s loss. Right now, looking back on it, of course I feel sadness and grief. Now I’m removed from it, that’s all I feel. But that’s now, that’s not the memory of what I felt then. It wouldn’t have made any sort of sense to feel sad then, I was too focused on surviving, on getting out of it, on getting my pack out of it. I felt them die, I felt the pack bonds snap, I felt the loss, but I didn’t feel sad about it until I rose from the grave. I spent five years reliving it and trying to survive it and not once did I feel sad. There’s simply no space for it.

But sitting here writing about how that’s not a sad memory for me is ridiculous too. It makes me feel like maybe I just didn’t care enough, or maybe I actually am the sociopath Stiles used to accuse me of being years ago. How can the tragedy that wiped out my entire pack not be a sad memory for me? I must be broken.

Which brings me to my next point of contention with this prompt: how am I supposed to rank my sad memories? When I was five I was incredibly sad when I found a little bird that had fallen from its nest, when I was sixteen I was about the same level of sad when we watched the towers fall down. We grow and we live and we experience until our contexts are so vastly different from before that there’s no comparing one sad memory with another from another point in our lives.

There’s no straight answer to this prompt. Or at least I’m going to pretend there isn’t for my own sake. I can spend an hour writing down a tragedy or recounting a sad memory and then whenever I flick through this journal in the future and come across this page, I’ll feel guilty about not choosing something that fits my new context better.

So, no, I don’t have a saddest memory. I have sad memories and I have tragedies.

Stiles is still sitting on the couch making as much noise as he possibly can. Oh, he’s doing it on purpose, no doubt about it. I’ve been on enough stake outs with him that I know for a fact he can quit the fidgeting if he has to. I can’t believe I’m putting up with this. Honestly, annoying me to let me know he’s there for me, how utterly juvenile.

How perfectly comforting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's a cop-out, but I couldn't write another depressing chapter, so have a "Peter can't come to the phone right now and talk about his feelings because he's very busy dissociating" chapter instead.
> 
> Anyway, hope you don't mind!


	27. 01/27/2020

**_When you were a child how did you imagine your adult self? _ **

When I was a child I imagined my adult self to be a carbon copy of my father. He was the biggest influence in my life at that point and he was actually trying to mold me into a mini him, so it makes sense I suppose. I imagined myself to be tall and strong and a fighter to be feared. I imagined I’d grow up just as imposing and terrifying as him. I imagined I’d grow up just as cold and ruthless. I hope my past self wasn’t right on all accounts.

At some point the thought of growing up to be just my father must have faded because I have a strong memory of when I was eleven and saw Jonathan and Talia spar with my mother and aunt. I remember wishing I could grow up to be just like my older siblings. I’m not entirely certain that I ever imagined myself succeeding in that, but I wanted to for the longest time. To be honest, I don’t think I ever stopped wanting that for myself. Talia and Jonathan were both amazing role models.

And it’s probably no coincidence that that shift happened right around the time my father started thinking I was the runt of the litter so to speak. I was short for my age, and scrawny, especially for a werewolf. It didn’t even seem to cross his mind that I could just be a late bloomer or that there’s more to being a left hand than being strong and imposing. Luckily for me I could always count on my mother to speak her mind and to come to my aid. Suffice it to say that she was less than impressed with her husband when he called me ‘runt’ in front of her. It’s the one time my mother didn’t send us all out of the house before they started their shouting match.

When she sat me down afterwards, she told me that for all his bravado and confidence, my father had his flaws. Judging people on a shallow first impression was one of them. She told me a story of my father underestimating a werewolf in a fight because he didn’t look like much of a fighter. She told me how quick and smart and cunning that werewolf was and how easily he got through our pack’s first line of defense.

I imagined being like that werewolf. I imagined growing up to not be much taller or much stronger but to be smart as a whip. I imagined not being feared like my dad was, but to still leave an impression of my own right. I imagined my mother looking proud when she talked about me. I imagined being at Talia’s side just like Jonathan and I imagined them trusting me no matter what.

I imagined being a good left hand.

I imagined being a great pack mate.

I imagined being nothing like my father.

I think I might still be imagining things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Peter had a shitty dad.  
> Sorry!  
> Let me know what you think in the comments and I'll see you tomorrow! <3


	28. 01/28/2020

**_Describe a good neighbor_ **

I don’t have much experience to speak from myself. With the pack house being in the middle of the preserve for most of my life, we didn’t really have neighbors. And when I settled down with Olivia we lived in an apartment surrounded by students, who are notoriously bad neighbors. My neighbors now are alright, but I doubt anyone in the building really knows one another. Certainly not me. Which sounds quite pathetic again I suppose, but it’s by choice. In an apartment complex filled with humans I’d rather not get too close to anyone and have to deal with questions.

All of that doesn’t mean that I don’t know of any good neighbors though. Stiles is one. And believe me, that’s not a compliment. Stiles is one of those good neighbors who will bake something to welcome the new people in his area. Stiles is one of those good neighbors who will talk to you every time you run into him. Stiles is one of those good neighbors who’ll join the neighborhood watch and organize neighborhood barbecues and get all up in your business with tips on how to water your garden.

Stiles is one of those good in theory neighbors and highly annoying in real life. Now is an annoying neighbor a good neighbor? In this case, yes. Would I like it? No. It’s great that he cares so much, but I just don’t understand why you would possibly care so much? Neighbors are just strangers that happen to live uncomfortably close by. Arguments can probably be made for neighbors being the most dangerous strangers. They see you every day, they know your routines, they’re close, they make sure you become familiar with them, they get you to accept food on the basis of them just being close to you geographically, and then one day they’re putting rohypnol in the stew they oh so kindly bring over and moving your unconscious body into their basement.

Can you tell I’d really like it if Scott and Derek got a move on and started on plans for a pack house in the middle of nowhere? I’m this close to just having the plans drawn up and telling them it’s happening, because if we have to wait for them to get their shit together on this, Erica and Boyd will have already started on baby number twelve.

So yes, Stiles is a good neighbor. Which positively terrifies me for the future. Unless we move into this hypothetical still-to-be-built pack house in the preserve immediately, which for fairly obvious reasons is not done for newly mated couples (I guess we have that in common with sparkly vampires), I will have to live in a neighborhood where Stiles socializes with everyone on the goddamn street.

Sure, in theory I wouldn’t necessarily have anything to do with the neighbors just because Stiles does, but in general when you’re a good neighbor, you get people trying to one-up you on being a good neighbor. And that is simply terrifying to me.

I dream about a life with Stiles, of course I do. I dream about waking up next to him every single morning, I dream about building a family together, I dream about the domestic bliss of finding my husband in the kitchen and bending him over the countertop to thank him for dinner. I dream about making him popcorn while he’s on the couch cursing at some movie or other, I dream about him finally coming home from work to take over wrestling our temper tantrum throwing toddler into bed.

And I know these aren’t just dreams, one day it will actually happen. I’ll be living a boring, domestic, white picket fence life with my mate.

Which means that for every one of those dreams I also have the nightmares of Karen showing up with a ridiculous smile and a three tier cake in her hands because “Oh, your husband’s cookies were just such a special treat! I had to do something in return, even if it’s not much. I didn’t have much time you see, had to take Chad to his basketball practice and Britney to dance class and of course Shelley called to say that she’d love my help organizing the wedding!”. And I’m smiling back and nodding and trying to balance a three tier cake in one hand and a toddler in my other and she won’t leave, Karen never leaves. Because the cake is never just a cake, you see, the cake is a lie! The cake is an excuse to look at how much of a mess our house is because I’m not really all that great at juggling the whims of a child and domestic chores and pack responsibilities. And Karen would just love to see how I’m not handling everything perfectly and she’ll start with the questions. They’ll seem innocent at first but she’ll bombard me with so many of them that I’ll slip up at some point and admit that I don’t go to the farmer’s market to buy organic ingredients every week, sometimes we even go to McDonald’s. And oh Karen will just have a field day with that one, because that basically counts as child endangerment! Think of the children! So since she’s successfully raised two bratty teenagers who I know for a fact are both dating the same edgy goth girl in a fit of teenage rebellion, she’ll start giving me advice and there is nowhere to run because I’m holding a toddler and a three tier cake and I can’t move out of the door frame till she leaves because she will see that we have stuff in this house that isn’t neatly organized inside boxes and she’ll see that I don’t fluff the dainty cushions on the couch every day and she’ll see that we have that one picture frame next to the stairs that always hangs a little crookedly. Karen will see!

And that is what you’ll get when your husband is a good neighbor! You get Karen! And is that really what we want, Stiles?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I don't know what happened. Well I do, Karen happened. I had zero inspiration for this prompt and somehow this is my personal favorite chapter yet.   
> It's also by far the longest. So thank you, Karen!   
> Let me know what you think and thank you ever so much for reading... whatever this is turning into.


	29. 01/29/2020

**_Who is someone you miss?_ **

Stiles was right, this prompt does suck – how did he put it again? Oh right – major donkey balls. I woke up to his text telling me to stay out of the prompt list for today because the prompt sucked aforementioned major donkey balls and it required the big guns. Whatever that was supposed to mean. So, like any good mate I dutifully followed his instructions and made sure to have dinner on the table by the time Stiles would get out of work.

Turns out “the big guns” consisted of a bottle of Jack Daniels for each of us, mine infused with some wolf’s bane and accompanied by the strict advice that “this is not a healthy coping mechanism, but it’s a slightly early reward for sticking with the diary for a month now”. He didn’t want me to be alone to answer this prompt and honestly, I think he also just wanted to talk about his own losses. He even told me to consider it a form of group therapy, if two people can really be considered a group.

We talked about some things we missed about the people we lost, we talked for hours and we drank and we cried and we didn’t even once pretend we had dust in our eyes. Stiles talked about his mother and how he missed Christmases and how he missed waking up on a sunny morning to already find his mother working in the garden and how he missed her birthday cards. Apparently she gave the best birthday cards. He also talked about Allison. He talked about how he missed being the owl between her and Scott, he talked about how he missed her dumb jokes and how he missed her courage and her attitude as the only fellow human in the pack.

I talked about… everyone I dared to mention. I told him about my mom and how good of an alpha she was, told him about how she would play hide and seek in the woods with all of us for hours on end, told him about how she gave the best hugs. I talked about Talia and her insufferable tendency of always beating me at random trivia games and monopoly, talked about how glad I am to have been able to see her grow into a better big sister than I thought she’d ever be. I talked about Jonathan and how much he would have loved Stiles, would’ve wiped the floor with him at any game,… I even told him about Olivia.

I wouldn’t have been able to write something for this prompt on my own, I’m really glad Stiles showed up. There’s an entirely different feeling to writing about someone you miss alone in your empty apartment as opposed to sharing the memories with someone else. One is just depressing, the other has a little spark of hope attached to it. Like by sharing the memory with someone else it will take longer for this person to be forgotten.

I’m just so happy I don’t have to miss Stiles. I have no clue what I’d do without him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand we're back to our regular scheduled programming of Peter is a Sad Boi.  
> Thanks for reading!


	30. 01/30/2020

**_What memories do you associate with winter?_ **

I don’t mean to shock you too badly, I really hope this answer isn’t too out there, but I have to be honest, right? That is the point of this diary after all. So I suppose I’ll just come out and say it then. Here goes nothing. The memories I associate with winter are mostly – if not all – memories of winter. I know. Shocking. What a revelation.

Well this prompt was phrased weirdly, wasn’t it?

But I only just got into this whole journaling thing so I guess I’ll elaborate a bit.

Winter memories are filled with holidays. The whole pack coming together and just spending entire days doing nothing else but being together. Sure we had our weekly pack meetings but it was very rare that the entire extended pack would actually make it every week. Some people were off to college, others travelled a lot, people had weekend jobs, some sort of sports practice… But for the holidays everyone made sure they could make it. All my Christmas memories are great. Our pack’s New Year’s celebrations were also legendary, and then there’s the first full moon of the new year of course.

The most important winter memories aren’t any grand celebrations or wild parties though, they’re simple every day stuff. Mostly memories of my mother and Jonathan, they loved winter. Loved everything about it. They woke up bright and early most mornings to go for a run while the winter chill was in the air and the woods were still dark. I can definitely see the appeal, it’s just getting up so early that’s not for me. When they got back they made hot chocolate for everyone, but the only ones who had “earned the right to mini marshmallows” were the ones who’d gone for a run. Most days my mother would follow up the hot chocolate with another round of baking. Gingerbread cookies, chocolate chip cookies, a rich chocolate cake… I’m pretty sure that’s all my mother did during winter: run with Jonathan, have hot chocolate for breakfast, and bake overly sweet stuff. You wouldn’t catch me complaining.

Jonathan loved the winter because the light was better for photographs in winter. Don’t ask me why, I still think he was bullshitting us all about the whole photography thing. Sure, he was surprisingly great at it, but it takes no one five hours to get a decent photograph of a wintery scene. I think he really just liked being outside by himself during that time of year. Winter is so quiet and peaceful. But Jonathan was always so busy with all of the projects he had going on. My brother would have felt stupid for just sitting outside for hours on end with no purpose to it while there were still a million things to do. And the pictures actually turned out good, so no one called him out for it.

Talia absolutely hated winter. At the first sign of a temperature drop she’d drag the armchair to the one spot of sun in the room, huddle up on it under a blanket and read all day. You’d never see her with a book in her hands unless it was cold outside. Don’t ask me about that either, siblings are weird.

Winter memories are quite good.

Now I have the strange urge to watch one of those god-awful Christmas movies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sick and almost forgot to post the chapter.  
> Sorry it's not much today guys.


	31. 01/31/2020

**_Are you a morning or night person? _ **

Neither. Can’t I be a midday kind of person?

Mornings are for sleeping in. Which, admittedly, is one of my favorite things to do, but I suppose if I sleep through the entire morning then that excludes me from being a morning person. More’s the pity. Nights are also for sleeping. Again, one of my absolute favorite things to do, so I’m not very fond of this question.

If I have to choose one or the other, I’ll have to go with being a night person because of the whole… werewolf thing I guess. I hate to feed into clichés, but there’s no way around it. Werewolves love the whole moon thing, and the running around in the dark thing, and the sleep is for the weak humans thing. It’s true though, the closer we are to the full moon the more energetic we become, and usually that translates into some fucked up sleeping patterns. Which is a pain in the butt when it comes to raising your werewolf children. Absolutely no way in hell you can manage to get them on a schedule.

Honestly, werewolf kids are such a hassle, it’s a wonder that we’re not completely extinct already. Sure they’re more durable than human children, but at what cost? No sleeping schedule, tantrums with claws and fangs once they start shifting, you don’t really have any option except homeschooling them because you can’t just keep them from flashing their eyes at literally everything, so you’re absolutely stuck with them constantly, and have you tried feeding a child something it doesn’t like? Try feeding a child with super senses something it’s not fond of. Werewolf pups are a fucking nightmare.

I digressed, and I don’t really have time to get back to the point because Stiles called a little while ago to inform me I need to come with them to see Bad Boys For Life. And I tried resisting, but what you gonna do? What you gonna do when they call for you?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have you guys seen the third Bad Boys yet? You should!  
> Sorry for the late posting and sorry for the short chapter with little to no actual content. I'm still sick, my sleep pattern is all fucked (am I making Peter too me? No one can prove anything) and my well of inspiration is well and truly dried up right now.


	32. 02/01/2020

**_The biggest lie you’ve ever told._ **

I did what I had to.

I don't care.

I'm fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We survived January! On to greener pastures!   
> Well....


	33. 02/02/2020

**_Something you learned from your grandfather_ **

I never knew my grandparents. Which, for once, isn’t a thinly veiled sob story. It’s actually quite rare for more than two generations to coexist in the same pack. Alpha powers can be passed down in genes as well, they don’t have to be willingly given away, they don’t have to be inherited when the previous alpha dies, they don’t have to be stolen. Sometimes it’s just genetics. Magic genetics, sure, but genetics nonetheless.

It's quite interesting to be honest. If an alpha decides to have children, usually one of them will grow into an alpha. Only one. Unless the alpha has children with all different partners and then all the rules fly out of the window. There’s a very disturbing legend about some alpha fucking half the town to create an alpha pack but then his children ate him? I might be slightly fuzzy on the details. Anyway, usually an alpha’s offspring will contain one (1) alpha werewolf. No more and no less. One werewolf who’ll grow into an alpha around the age of 16 (slightly earlier for female wolves and slightly later for male wolves). And while alphas are very territorial and alpha children do usually go off to start their own pack, the whole “you’ll only pass your alpha genes onto one child” isn’t programmed into our – admittedly magical – DNA just to minimize infighting, it’s all to better our chances of survival as a species.

Yes, we are stronger in packs, but for a species as a whole, living in packs can be a weakness. If we all just stuck together in gigantic groups it wouldn’t take much to wipe us all out. Just a couple of fires and boom, pest control done. It’s better to be spread out over the entire planet in a lot of different groups, of manageable yet still respectable size. Two generations of the same pack plus some spouses and whichever siblings they might possibly bring with them, plus some close allies they gathered over the years makes the perfect size pack. So grandparents are often somewhat of an abstract concept to werewolves, especially werewolves my age. When Talia offered our mother a place in our new pack it seemed like some sort of groundbreaking and novel idea.

It’s certainly been changing over the years. The packs I’ve been meeting with since Scott and Derek established the Hale-McCall pack properly have mostly been larger packs, more generations still living under the same roof. I didn’t really know what to think of it at first, it weirded me out. But a beta in Satomi’s pack made an offhand comment that stuck with me because of how ridiculous it is.

We’re losing our natural habitats. Deforestation, paired with – ironically enough – attempts at setting up nature preserves, has rapidly eaten away at territories that used to be owned by one pack or other before. Because while those nature preserves are perfect for actual animals, while they’re even introducing or re-introducing endangered species in those areas, you can’t actually just build a pack house in them. We take the Beacon Hills situation for granted since the Hales basically built this county way back when, but for other packs it’s become enough of a concern that a new alpha won’t just start a new pack somewhere else, they’ll inherit the pack of the alpha that came before them.

So yes, I guess it doesn’t take a fire to wipe out a species, just a… sad lack of trees.

(Not that we’d actually die, it would just be mildly inconvenient.)

(Though don’t underestimate the effects of a continuously mildly inconvenienced werewolf on the fragile human population.)

(And then hunters will take note and burn us all to death.)

(Oh wait…)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deforestation kills werewolves.  
> Recycle, people.


	34. 02/03/2020

**_I haven’t even looked at the prompt, there’s too much to talk about_ **

A lot has happened since we last spoke.

I need to stop personifying my diary like I’m a goddamn 12 year old, because it’s incredibly weird.

Anyway, a lot has happened. I wrote the previous entry in the morning because of the Superbowl, I fully intended to pig out on my couch, had a mountain of diabetes-inducing snacks waiting for me in the kitchen. And then Stiles barged in during the pregame to ask why the fuck I wasn’t at the loft for the Superbowl party. On our way there – because of course I dropped everything in an instant and went wherever Stiles thought I should be (shut up, I’m not “whipped”, I just care) – he might have let it slip that it was his fault I wasn’t invited because everyone had just assumed Stiles would tell me about it and he forgot because he was too busy blabbering about Bad Boys.

Derek seemed surprisingly pleased to see me. So did Scott and Isaac but I’m 1000% certain they were just reacting to the snacks I’d brought. Not that I blamed them, the whole pack was there, there was no such thing as enough snacks. (That’s not even taking into account the fact that Erica had commandeered an entire platter of snacks for herself, which she was balancing on her very prominent pregnancy belly. Which was fair, she needed the food twice as much as anyone else. Though if I was a braver man I’d have tried to give her some actually nutritious stuff in between the pizza rolls and the hotdogs and the chips.)

And Stiles… well… I think I mentioned before how crowded the loft gets when the entire pack is there? It’s really not built to fit that many people. Which is why we don’t spend many pack nights gathered on the couch. There’s not enough couch. Most of us end up sitting on the floor because pulling up chairs for everyone takes up too much space. I’ve never joined them before for one of those pack movie nights because most of us sitting on the floor together reminds me too much of the honest-to-god puppy piles we used to have before the fire. And a couple of years ago when I joined and took up a seat on the couch, I ended up taking two, because when people are offered a spot next to a murderer or a spot on the floor, they generally choose the floor. I wasn’t offended, I’m still not, I’d done nothing to earn anyone’s trust at that point. But even though I am now definitely a reformed murderer and I know for a fact most of the pack doesn’t mind me that much anymore, I wasn’t very keen on having that “ew, creeper Peter is here” experience again.

Of course Stiles knew. Two empty spots on the couch. Two post-it notes on the cushions “Reserved for Stiles Stilinski”, “Reserved for Peter Hale”. I found it a particularly thoughtful touch that he put me in the middle seat, my alpha on my right and my mate on my left.

Sure, he gave me a snarky explanation for saving the seat because he was just “being kind to my old knees, I’m not as young as I once was, who even knew if I could ever get up off the floor again with my fragile bones?” But he bumped my knee in a way that suggested he knew exactly what he was doing.

We actually bumped knees a lot.

And then shoulders.

Till eventually we just figured it’d be easier on both our joints to let them rest against one another for the entirety of the party.

(It’s been almost 24 hours. I might still be giddy about it. But you can’t prove that.)

(Because you’re a diary and I need to stop acting like this is somehow a two-way conversation!!!)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiya, thanks for reading!   
> Look! No sad! A BUDDING ROMANCE EVEN?!!!   
> It's like you've tuned into an entirely different program.


	35. 02/04/2020

**_Your favorite childhood vacation. _ **

I have never come so close to not writing a diary entry before. Today I really almost said fuck it. Not because of the prompt, I don’t usually read the prompt until I’m ready to sit down and answer it. I almost said fuck it to this whole thing because I spent the past two days in a giddy, happy, embarrassingly love-sick blur and I just didn’t want to ruin it with another depressing prompt. So I promised myself that it would be fine even if I didn’t answer the prompt, if I just wrote about my day or about something that was on my mind. As long as I just wrote down something it would be fine.

Now I got a prompt that’s not depressing and I still don’t have an answer. We didn’t really do vacations. I’m not quite sure if that’s a werewolf thing, a pack thing, or a Hale thing. I also just can’t imagine going on vacation when I was a child? Our family situation didn’t really seem to lend itself to vacations. First there’s the werewolf thing. The werewolf thing is twofold: it’s annoying to go on vacation because the chances you wouldn’t end up on someone else’s territory are pretty low, and it’s annoying to go on a family vacation because while it’s not uncomfortable to be away from your own territory, it’s uncomfortable to leave it undefended.

Second there’s the fact that Talia already had Laura by the time I was seven. My sister had always lived a fast life, admittedly, she was a mom by the time she was 19, but the point is that the age difference between me and my siblings made a family trip difficult to organize. By the time I would have really been able to enjoy a good old family vacation, my brother had a job and my sister was busy going to college and having kids of her own. And being in such different stages in our lives meant that it was pretty much impossible for our schedules to line up for any extended period of time. Yes, even a week.

I did enjoy going on trips to allied packs with my father and later on with Talia and Jonathan. Even though, or maybe because, I was a weirdly young left-hand, it always made me feel important to be invited to these pack functions. It’s not really what a lot of people would call a fun vacation, what with all the protocols and formalities to stick to, all the rules to follow and all the control that’s necessary to not just say whatever the fuck comes to mind… But for some reason I’ve always found it interesting to see how other packs function.

It wasn’t really a vacation, but I couldn’t think of anything else that could possibly fit this prompt.

In other news, I think I have a cat?

Scott dropped her off today, which caught me completely off guard because I wasn’t even aware that Scott knew where I lived. And I also didn’t remember agreeing to take in a “mean cat no one wanted to adopt”. (She’s not mean at all, she’s an absolute delight I don’t know what the fuck Scott has been smoking.) Apparently I was giddy enough and distracted enough during our Superbowl party that I just said yes when asked if I’d want a cat.

I probably need to have a word with Scott about how it’s not cool to pawn pets off to people when they’re inebriated on affection.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Peter deserves a cat even if he didn't know it yet.   
> (Also Peter is a werewolf. He doesn't get drunk, he's totally above that. "Drunk on love" is for the human plebs. Peter gets inebriated on affection. u.u)


	36. 02/05/2020

**_What was your first driving experience like? _ **

Smooth, secret, stylish.

You know, the usual.

I was about to turn fifteen and had actually managed to get a date. I went the whole nine yards. Asked him out sweetly after school, promised to pick him up for dinner and a movie, showed up in Jonathan’s red Ferrari with a bouquet of roses on the passenger seat… It was tacky and corny and I couldn’t have been prouder. Sure, Jonathan would maim me for stealing his precious baby the second I got back, but as long as nothing happened to the car it would just be some grievous bodily harm and not actual murder. I’ll take grievous bodily harm over murder any day. Rising from the grave is exhausting.

I’d never gotten behind a wheel before, but Jonathan had gotten that car 6 months prior to my little date and he still hadn’t grown tired of showing it off. He showed it off so often to me that he basically taught me how to drive stick shift without ever letting me lay my hands on the wheel or the shift. To be honest, I wouldn’t have been able to pull it off if it weren’t for the whole werewolf thing. To this day it’s still a mystery to me how humans ever learn to drive.

Because when I say Jonathan taught me how to drive I mean that Jonathan couldn’t for the life of him stop telling me to listen to the subtle changes in engine rumblings and whatnot and I learned the rest from just paying attention. The engine rumbled louder, got all whiny and stuff? Time to shift gears. Jonathan got distracted by some beautiful lady walking on the side of the road? Car responded with a horrible stuttering and Jonathan muttered about the clutch. When you learn what a car sounds and feels like for six months and you know the basics of how to operate the gas, brakes and gears, and you have supernatural reflexes, driving a car is really not that difficult.

At least not in small town Beacon Hills. I probably wouldn’t have survived LA traffic.

Date went amazingly well. Got my kiss at the end of the night on my date’s porch. Jonathan didn’t even maim me a little bit. It was very telling of his character when he just got all mushy big brother on me and couldn’t stop going on and on about how I was finally growing up and getting some. Pathetic how he just let me waltz all over him. Though I didn’t mind the whole mushy big brother routine when he realized it was a guy I went out with and he didn’t look anything but proud.

Stiles came by today to drop off a bag of cat food because he thought for sure Scott had forgotten to bring some. Of course Scott didn’t bring any, but I was more than a little offended that Stiles thought I wouldn’t have the brains to go out and get Kat some food. Yes. I named my cat Katherine. You can fuck right off with that judgmental blank page stare, diary, Stiles fucking loved the name.

Kat’s not sure what to think of Stiles yet, she kept her distance while we watched a couple episodes of Star Trek Discovery together. But Stiles is determined to win her over. If I’d known that all it would take was a cat to keep Stiles coming over every day, I’d have gotten one a long time ago.

(Don’t tell Stiles, but that nasty bag of store brand food went right to the trash. I like this cat.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Katherine Hale will not be raised on store brand cat food. God, Stiles, what were you thinking? That is so obviously beneath her.


	37. 02/06/2020

**_What is your relationship like with your siblings?_ **

Oh you know, we get on like a house on fire.

Honestly, I’d rather not. Not today. I’ll just get into bed early and cuddle with Kat till we both fall asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd say I'm sorry, but we all know I'm not.


	38. 02/07/2020

**_What personal achievement are you most proud of? _ **

Well, I am so glad you asked.

The personal achievement I am most proud of is the catification of my apartment. And I’d like to think Jackson Galaxy would be proud too. I have to admit I didn’t know much about taking care of a cat other than giving it food and water and a place to let her do her business. So since Scott just handed her over to me I’ve been watching some videos on youtube, stumbled upon some training vids and then tumbled into the My Cat From Hell hole, which is just… a terrible show but somehow still entertaining and mildly educational.

Especially the bit about “catification” make your place suitable for a cat so you don’t have to let it go outside and have it run over by a car. I’m sure he said it less crudely, but that’s what it comes down to. Turns out cats like high vantage points, so I ordered an insane amount of bookshelves and put them up all around the apartment in some form of heavenly climbing route for Kat. There’s three starting points: her scratching post, the side of the actual bookcase where I built a little stairstep thing leading up to the top of the bookcase, and apparently the couch. Yeah, she likes to just get a running start on the couch and jump up to one of the bookshelves/climbing units. She’s insane, but clearly having fun.

She also loves to just lounge on top of the bookcase instead of on top of her scratching post, so I need to get her a little cat bed for up there so she can get comfortable. Whenever she’s up there it makes me want to sign up for Instagram because it looks like the perfect basic book bitch Instagram picture. A cat on a bookshelf next to some succulents. (Yes, I am sufficiently grateful that she hasn’t knocked those off yet, but Kat’s a good cat, I shouldn’t be surprised.)

Scott came over tonight with Kira to check up on Kat. I dare say I impressed them with my home renovations. Although I’m willing to bet they set the bar pretty low, since Scott looked like he was physically bracing himself to having to witness the scene of a massacre when I opened the door for them. Ah well, why am I surprised? Kira clearly had higher hopes, she brought me some handmade cat toys. She crocheted an army of mice, all with that noisy wrinkly plastic inside. Kat loves them. And by that I mean she has already destroyed two.

Kat is honestly one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. I should invite Scott over again someday soon. For dinner. As a proper thank you. (Lord knows Kira could use a decent meal that she doesn’t have to make herself. Honestly, letting your pregnant girlfriend cook every single night. Shameful.)

Speaking of shameful. Stiles came over last night.

Why was it not in last night’s diary entry you ask? Oh, that would be because he came way after I’d gone to sleep. Not only did he come to my apartment, for a nice friendly visit. He also used his key. His key to my place to let himself in. I did not give this guy a key. Obviously I shouldn’t have assumed that would in any way stop him from getting in if he wanted to, Harry Potter figured that out in his very first year of Hogwarts. So I was ready for him to saunter in by using some magic, but a copied key? So basic. Honestly, I feel strangely violated. To be bamboozled in such an old fashioned and such a human way. I’m utterly mortified.

Yes, that is definitely the reason I am ashamed. Not the fact that he caught me huddled together with Kat while in full shift. Definitely not that. He didn’t even catch me. Catching me implies I was doing something I didn’t want anyone to see. Who cares? He saw me huddled together with Kat while in full shift. He also may have gotten a couple of pictures of it. Which he might show if I don’t take him for coffee next week. But I’m not embarrassed. I can be a strong badass werewolf who cuddles with cats. My reputation won’t be tainted by this event in the slightest. There is absolutely no need to be embarrassed.

Which in turn means I’m not being blackmailed. Stiles just gave me an excuse to ask him out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know last chapter was no fun. I don't apologize for no fun chapters, because you just read them, I have to write them.   
> That being said... full shift Peter cuddling his cat.   
> It's not an apology.   
> It's just a thing. It's a thing now.   
> So... You're welcome.


	39. 02/08/2020

**_How do you normally spend your weekends?_ **

I’ve definitely covered the most important parts of my weekend in other parts of this diary before. Saturday mornings are spent at the library reading newspapers and magazines and drinking coffee I smuggled in by charming the librarian. Lydia joins me but doesn’t speak. Although today she did. She demanded to see some pictures of Kat before she started reading the latest issue of some applied mathematics journal that goes way over my head. Then before she left she told me her coffee order so I could bring her one next week.

I’ve never been quite so torn between feeling offended or flattered. I’m definitely taking more cat pictures today though so I have something to talk about with the pack tomorrow.

Which is the other thing I do on weekends, but I’ve definitely talked about food prep and pack meetings on Sundays before. So no need to go into that again. Let’s get to the interesting stuff now.

Saturdays are also grocery days. I know right, absolutely captivating. Well it was today because I might have accidentally gone shopping for baby clothes? It’s not my fault, I went to the farmer’s market but I was late because I slept in so I had to go after my silent weird library date with Lydia that wasn’t as silent as I’d expected it to be but that’s already been discussed and it’s beside the point. I went to the farmer’s market around lunch time which is the worst time to go to the farmer’s market. It’s so crowded. Too crowded. So the only parking spot I found that was anywhere in the vicinity of the market was right in front of a baby store. I didn’t even know Beacon Hills had a baby store.

This wouldn’t have been an issue if I hadn’t walked into fresh parents with their newborn on the farmer’s market and their baby was wearing the cutest little T.A.R.D.I.S. onesie. And it got into my head because Kira would fucking love that, but then I started thinking about Erica because she’s due in only a short four months now. I couldn’t stop thinking about the baby needing clothes. Cool and fun clothes. Because if the baby has cool and fun clothes the pack will never be able to stop fawning over the pup and it will be good fawning. Not the kind of pity fawning some kids get. You know, the babies dressed in those stupid boob themed clothes? “I had boobs for breakfast”, “Hakuna ma’s tatas”, “Boobivore”, “I’m not just milk drunk, I’m tit faced”. You know…

And I know Erica. And Isaac. And… fuck it, Stiles too. They’re all terrible. They all totally would. But it’ll be a werewolf baby and although there’s no science to prove this I am certain that baby will learn to differentiate the “I’m laughing with you” from the “I’m laughing at you” laughs in no time.

What I’m trying to say is: I may have bought 20 blank baby onesies in varying colors and sizes and I may have made some iron on decals that are all equally nerdy and adorable so this baby doesn’t have to wear a boob reference ever until they can actually consent to it.

So I guess that’s how I’m really spending my weekend. Designing decals and ironing onesies.

And I guess I’m going to have to spend the better part of Sunday morning trying to figure out how to give these to Erica without making it seem like I gave a gift to Erica. I want these onesies to actually be worn not be thrown out because they came from creeper Peter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Peter is very excited about pack pups, okay? VERY EXCITED.


	40. 02/09/2020

**_Your favorite winter recipe_ **

There’s a couple. I love a hearty pumpkin soup, one of those thick creamy soups that’s an actual meal instead of watered down vegetable juice. And I love a good stew or a shepherds pie. Although maybe a hot chocolate is the real must have winter recipe. I said it before and I’ll say it again, don’t make me pick favorites, you inanimate object that is simply a receptacle for my own inner monologue and not a conversation partner. Why do I keep doing this?

Anyway, I couldn’t possibly give less of a crap about winter recipes.

Stiles and Derek came over this morning to help me with some meal prep for the pack gathering. Derek mostly came over to get an unscheduled cooking class out of me, but he still helped with clean up so I guess I can forgive him. They found the onesies I made so I couldn’t just… put the onesies in a box and hope Erica found them in the loft.

I ended up just… giving them to Erica and Boyd? And they might have liked them a lot? Everyone seemed to like them. Except for Stiles’ complaining about my not having wrapped them all individually, there wasn’t even a bad word about them. Not a single one. Not even a “why would he do this?” or a “what does this mean?”. No one even uttered the words “all this fucking cat hair, I bet he thought I was allergic” even though there was a ton of fucking cat hair and I really need to get myself an insane supply of lint rollers.

So that went over well? And I never thought it would. Scott even demanded some for his pup. Not Kira. Scott. (Don’t get me wrong, IOTISARFMYOIMANACP, Kira’s always been one of the kindest, probably because she never saw me at my worst. And I don’t doubt she’d love this kind of gift even if it came from me. But Scott? Scott’s a big deal. First giving me Kat, now letting me give him a gift for his child,… next thing you know the guy actually trusts me. That would be bonkers of course.)

On another less positive note, I think I may have misread the situation with Stiles? I asked him out for coffee on Friday. It’s not that he blew me off completely, he said he had plans. But Friday’s Valentine’s day… so if he has plans for Valentine’s day that probably means he’s not looking for a romantic kind of coffee, he’s just looking for the platonic kind.

Which is still great. And I would love to go out and have coffee with him platonically. It’s just that I’d prefer to do it the other way.

It’s just that I’d prefer to not spend the entirety of Valentine’s day thinking about who he is with.

He’s my soulmate. I hate that he might be with someone else. And I know we could talk about this like adults, that’s… a very viable option. He’d be all nice about it too, wouldn’t judge me for a second, would apologize for giving me the wrong impression, would go out of his way to make sure I understood it wasn’t me, and he’d never let this get in the way of our kind of new friendship because he’s too damn loyal to let that happen. Honestly, if I told him about the whole soulmates thing, he probably wouldn’t even hesitate to call off his date. He certainly smells attracted enough to me.

I’m not scared about his reaction. Not at all. I just don’t think I’m ready for that conversation yet. Is that weird? I know he’s my soulmate, I know I want to be with him, I’m not particularly fond of the idea of him going on a date with someone else… but I don’t feel ready to be his date yet.

I suppose that’s not entirely true either. I’m ready to be his date, I’m ready for the good and easy parts. But if we just… get together now while I still need cat pictures as conversation starters with my own pack mates, then what’s our relationship going to be like? Am I going to need cat pictures to talk to him?

It's a good thing to just go out for platonic cups of coffee for now. It’s a good thing he’s got nice plans for valentine’s day. It’s a good thing that wolfsbane infused liquor exists.  
  
  
  
  
(Stiles would probably say it's also a good thing that I'm able to recognize that these are good things AND I'm also able to recognize that what I really want is something different though it's still out of reach for now, it's still worth reaching for.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate to say it but we were probably due another tough chapter. It's only february, we're not even a quarter through the suffering yet.  
> But growth!


	41. 02/10/2020

**_Tell me why I don’t like Mondays_ **

Okay fine, that wasn’t the actual prompt for today, but I want to talk about Mondays. Because they suck. Even for the lucky people without a regular 9 to 5. Okay, maybe not for all the lucky people without a regular 9 to 5. I’m saying Mondays suck for me. Not because it means I’m going back to a job, but… well maybe they suck because I’m not going back to a job.

The weekend is always so full of pack, it’s wonderful. And then come Monday, everyone is off doing their own stuff, getting started on a productive week. For me, Mondays are just the same as all the other weekdays, there’s no stressful start of getting back to work, just taking care of pack business when I have to, maybe going out for some groceries, doing some cleaning up after all the cooking I did over the weekend… It’s not like it’s a bad day with a lot of work.

It's just that every Monday seems to be a bit of a shock to my system after spending an entire weekend preparing for the pack meeting or being at the pack meeting. It makes the Mondays seem lonelier. No one’s eager to text or call because we just saw each other, even the group text is quiet. The apartment feels too big and empty for just me, even though there’s a grey blur climbing the walls and racing over the sofa these days. And it doesn’t help that everyone hates Mondays. Because come Monday morning it’s like a resigned hush has fallen over the apartment block. People are dragging themselves through their morning routines before dragging themselves a little further to work.

Mondays are so… dull and numbing. We all just drag ourselves through them to get to the rest of the week. Nothing exciting ever happens on a Monday. I’ve never written Monday so many times in quick succession before. It has ceased to be a word.

Mondays are so dull that I’m writing this entry before noon. And I’m running out of things to talk about. Maybe I should text Stiles. Maybe we can grab that cup of coffee today, or maybe I’m lucky and he forgot his lunch again. Maybe we can just text despite having just seen each other yesterday.

Stiles would understand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's almost 3 am here. I'm posting later and later. I need sleep.   
> Who's with Peter on Mondays just generally having a downer vibe?  
> I definitely am (also maybe cause the new semester started today and I don't waaaaannaaaaaaa).


	42. 02/11/2020

**_Are you a city or a country person? _ **

I’m a city person in theory, but a werewolf in practice and werewolf life doesn’t mix well with cities. Which means I am forever doomed to be the stuck up, smarmy, rich, big city kind of guy who is stuck in a small town with a small town mindset. I’m telling you, 99% of why people think I’m an asshole is because I’m a regular city person forced to live in a small town. You put me in New York and suddenly people start thinking I’m a nice guy.

(I’m not saying I’m not an asshole, by the way. Definitely am one of those. But it shouldn’t take people only a couple of seconds to figure that out about me, that’s the part I’m blaming on the small town mindsets.)

I lived in New York with Olivia for a bit while we were both at college. It was great, just inconvenient. You can’t really go for a full moon run partially shifted in Central Park. So the only way I could live in New York is having a place to go back to and let my wolf out. Obviously, that part doesn’t seem like something you can’t work around if you want to live in a city so badly: you get some territory in the suburbs, there must be hiking places somewhere, put a packhouse near the wolf-out-full-moon-go-for-a-run area and move the pack to an apartment building more towards the city center. Boom, best of both worlds.

Nope, not an option. Maybe it’s doable for a small pack, but even that is doubtful. There’s just too much risk of being found out, you know? Of course there’s the whole stereotypical “everyone knows everyone and sees everything in a small town” and the flipside of that being “in a big city no one really takes note of you at all”. That’s fair, works perfect for a short period of time. If you’re ever being pursued by hunters, best course of action is to go up in the bustling crowd of a city.

But if I’ve learned anything over the years it’s that for some reason or other, the supernatural attracts the supernatural. If a werewolf pack actually established itself in a city, which is totally fine in theory, they’ll soon attract more supernatural activity to the area. As we know, that rarely goes down in a peaceful manner, so in a busy city, people will notice and maybe more importantly, people will get hurt.

It's already a miracle that we have gone undetected for so long in Beacon Hills (although, I doubt there aren’t at least some humans who have noticed some stuff go down over the years), we would have never pulled that off in a city like New York.

So that derailed the question. But yes, I love big cities, so for a trip or a vacation I’d rarely pick anything other than a city trip. But for longevity and sustainability of the pack, it’s not an option to live in such constant close proximity to so many humans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! And for all the lovely comments you guys constantly leave me, it's just so cool to read what you think! <3


	43. 02/12/2020

**_Your most prized possession_ **

This crocheted blanket Talia gave me one Christmas. It’s lovely, all blues and greens… it’s pretty big and it’s got a solid heavy weight to it, and it’s so soft. Seriously best blanket on the planet. It only survived the fire because Cora had stolen it to put it in her treehouse. I swear to god, all Talia’s kids ever did was steal my bedlinen.

There’s three reasons why it’s my most prized possession:

  * Best blanket in the world, hands down, not even a competition.
  * Sentimental value: my sister gave it to me, it’s one of the few possessions I have left from before the fire and it’s got a strong connection to Cora. Cora spent entire days in that treehouse wrapped in that blanket. I’m definitely imagining it at this point, but sometimes I could still swear I catch a whiff of her scent in it. Laura brought it to the hospital when I was in a coma, right before she left. I guess she thought it would give me some comfort. It didn’t do much good in that wretchedly white place, but it’s certainly doing me some good now.
  * The story of the blanket.



Settle in and listen up, dear inanimate object of mine that is definitely not somehow listening. Every Christmas since Talia became alpha, we used to do a themed gift exchange. It was between Talia, Jonathan, and me, and whoever our significant others were at the time. It was lovely every year, no matter the theme. It was just such a nice way to show not only our appreciation for one another but also show how well we knew the others. And it was definitely a competition, no matter what the Christmas spirit had to say about that.

We turned everything into a competition, but the gift exchange was one of our main events, you know, the Hale Olympics if you will. It’s just that they were predictable as fuck. Talia won. Every single year, no matter the theme. It was getting increasingly annoying. She’d gloat about it till Easter. Jonathan and I were not amused.

But then, one faithful year, Olivia rigged it. Of course, Jonathan and I had talked about rigging the gift exchange before, but we could never figure out just how to do it and how to get away with it. It’s a gift exchange. It’s very hard to rig a gift exchange. If anyone could do it though, Olivia could. She figured out the one variable that could be rigged: the theme draw.

Back when we first started this Christmas tradition, the three of us sat down at the kitchen table and wrote down a bunch of possible themes on slips of paper and put them in a big glass jar. Over the years, every time one of us got an idea for another theme we threw it in there. We’d draw that year’s theme on December 1st and the competition was afoot.

One year, right after the draw had happened, Olivia snuck off with the jar and replaced all the slips of paper with one that just had a single simple word written on it “handmade”. Because if Talia had one weakness it was that she had two left hands. Couldn’t craft or make something to save her life. On one memorable occasion Talia managed to break our television when mom was teaching her to knit. Priceless.

I swear, the next year, when we drew the theme “handmade”, Talia actually paled. Neither Jonathan or I knew about Olivia’s involvement in this at the time, so each of us spent all of December convinced that the other had been genius enough to put that theme in the jar and it resulted in us subtly complimenting each other and thanking each other at every opportunity, for any reason whatsoever because we were both so impressed by the other’s cunning.

Then come Christmas, Talia gives both of us these blankets. I got a blue and green one and Jonathan got a red and brown one. So there was Talia, trying to convince us she had crocheted not one, but two blankets in less than a month. That was already entertaining enough, since everyone and their pet dragon knew that it was bullshit, but then Jonathan actually unfolded his and finds this big freaking tag in it with big bold letters proclaiming the blanket was “MADE IN CHINA”. It only got better when Olivia showed us the jar that was full of “handmade” paper slips. And just when you thought that was it, Elliot, Talia’s own husband, points out that “handmade” really could’ve just been something someone else made by hand that she didn’t have to make anything herself at all.

Neither Jonathan, Olivia, or me had thought of that. So suffice to say that Elliot won that year, but even if I didn’t win and got my face rubbed in the fact that I missed such an obvious loophole, it was all worth it for Talia being dethroned as best gift-giver and getting this blanket.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I get a Yay for non-depressing content?!


	44. 02/13/2020

**_What qualities do you value in a romantic partner?_ **

  * Loyalty
  * Intelligence
  * A sense of humor
  * Bravery
  * Cunning
  * The ability to give good hugs
  * Unpronounceable names
  * Sarcasm
  * Adorable awkward flailing in social situations where they feel out of their depth
  * Protectiveness
  * The ability to fall asleep anywhere (ideally paired with the ability to bitch about needing their own pillow if they’re trying to fall asleep on any surface meant for sleeping)
  * Polish heritage
  * Amber eyes
  * Upturned nose
  * Wider-than-you’d-expect shoulders
  * Soft rose pillow-y looking lips that I just know would feel… great and soft to kiss (shut up, diary)
  * A smile I want to wake up to every morning for the rest of my life



**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Qualities that can be found in any romantic partner of course.   
> Peter's merely speaking in generalities.


	45. 02/14/2020

**_What makes you happy?_ **

Oh, you know, the little things.

The teeny tiny things.

The things that totally are not a big deal at all.

Like waking up to a knock on the door, followed by the sound of Stiles’ sneakers quickly squeaking back towards the elevator and hearing him giggle all the way down until his rattling jeep drives off again.

You know, that kind of little thing. Super inconsequential.

Like getting a weird giddy feeling in the pit of your stomach when you roll out of bed because you’ve just remembered it’s not such a normal day after all. Like finally opening the door to find a ridiculously large bouquet of my favorite flowers and a neatly wrapped gift waiting for you on the welcome mat.

You know, the little things that you’re almost starting to take for granted because they just happen so frequently.

Like finding the little card that was attached to the tulips. The card that only said “ _Next year I expect a box of chocolates and a candle-lit dinner in return”_ in a wonky scribble across the paper.

The really normal every-day occurrences that just put the slightest hint of a smile on your face when you stop to think about them even though you barely noticed them happening in the moment.

Like having your mate drop you off a box filled with mildly scented bath products, some lovely herbal tea with rose petals in it, and a copy of _Red, White & Royal Blue_.

The usual things.

Like starting your day off with a cup of tea and a hot bubble bath, reading a book and managing to not get it wet. Like getting out of the steaming bathroom to find the entire flat smelling fresh and flowery because of the big vase full of brightly colored tulips standing proudly on the dining table.

Those little things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's Day!!!!   
> (I'm going to do my best to post tomorrow but it might be the first day I have to post a day late...)


	46. 02/15/2020

**_What nicknames did you have growing up?_ **

Not many. Thank god.

Talia and Johnathan just used to call me Petey. I hated it because it felt so belittling for some reason. They were older and bigger, sure, but did they have to rub it in like that all the time?

In hindsight of course, it really wasn’t that bad. Could have been a lot worse actually. I remember all the names Laura used to call Derek. It wasn’t pretty. And there were so many of them too. It’s like she found a new embarrassing thing to call her brother every other week and somehow all of them stuck. Derek’s ears used to go red every single time she called him something other than Derek. It was adorable.

My mom used to call me “little one”. Oh and she never stopped calling me little one. I was 20 and she was still calling me that. She always saved it for moments when it was just us though. I’d have been mortified if she called me that in public. Of course the rest of the pack must have overheard once or twice, but eavesdropping was never appreciated even if you really couldn’t help it as a werewolf, the least you could do was never bring up what you overheard that should have stayed private. So no one ever brought up the nickname/pet name/what’s the difference? And do I care about the difference?

I never brought it up that Talia used to call her mate “tiger”, and oh god, I could have had some fun with that. Honestly… tiger… who does that? Daddy would have been better. Anything would have been better. But it was their private thing so it was sadly off limits.

My father wasn’t big on nicknames. He called me runt exactly once before mom told him off and that’s the only time I can remember him calling me by anything but my name or my position in the pack.

I didn’t have enough friends in high school to earn a nickname either. I thought humans were so far beneath me, I acted like I didn’t even hear them on the rare occasions they tried to reach out to one of those weird mysterious Hales. And then in university… it was really just Olivia. But I guess university is after I grew up too, so not exactly pertinent to this prompt.

Let’s see… was there anything else? I don’t think so.

It seems like forever ago. Everything seems like forever ago. Sometimes I feel like I’ve lived an entire life already and just don’t remember it. Like it’s all hazy and underwater and forgotten, but it still happened. I don’t know if that makes a lot of sense, but that’s what it feels like. On the good days at least.

On the bad days it feels like it all happened yesterday.

All of it.

Not just killing Laura, not just the fire… not just the bad things. Maybe it would make more sense if it was just the bad things. But it’s _everything_. Meeting Olivia, my moon dance with Talia, playing video games with Johnathan, studying with my father, reading Harry Potter to Laura and Derek, playing with Cora in the garden…

A whole life. The good and the bad. There and gone in what feels like just a single day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry I disappeared, I had a crazy busy week. I'll catch up as soon as possible, I'm soooorrry /o\


	47. 02/16/2020

**_Did you ever get lost as a child? _ **

Hello… Werewolf here. I shouldn’t have to explain the heightened senses anymore at this point. What makes you think I could ever get lost? Between my sense of smell and my superior eye sight, I’d have to be a right idiot to get lost, now, wouldn’t I?

Okay fine. I may have gotten lost as a child once.

In my defense, I was trying to run away and just did too good a job of it. That’s all.

It was Talia’s moon party and even though she was just sixteen, she was already at the top of her game: networking like only an alpha could. It was honestly kind of weird to see her just talking to everyone and buttering everyone up, kissing ass left and right trying to find worthy allies for a pack she was still years away from actually establishing. Because before that I just knew Talia as my annoying older sister who yelled in teen tantrums and acted like she was so far above me and Johnathan every single day because she was the Alpha and we were merely her right and left hands. It’s not like she actually needed us or anything, no sir.

I think mom had a talk with her before her moon party, about the whole holier than thou attitude she had going on constantly. She just… dropped the act overnight. But no one had warned me about that. I was only four and it looked like my sister had been replaced by a pod person. And she was introducing me to people like I was her equal instead of a toddler. And I had no clue what the fuck was going on, except that I very much did not like the cheek pinching and all the strangers touching me and touching my sister and asking all these questions I didn’t know the answers to.

So I just wanted to get away. I was going to come back! After the party was over.

But my dad had just covered the whole “use your nose” chapter in the book on werewolf tracking methods. (That’s a lie, there was no book, my dad’s curriculum was a mess). So I knew that covering your scent or at least make it confusing for someone to follow was important. So I did. I rolled around in mud and ran in circles and backtracked a couple times till I was sure no one could find me and drag me back to my pod person sister and all the prodding people and the cheek pinching.

And I was right. It took them almost a full 24 hours to find me. I probably started freaking out around hour 8 when the sun came up and woke me from a peaceful unaware slumber. By hour 12 I was fully convinced I’d never find my way back to civilization let alone my own pack, so I’d taken to hunting small rabbits, just hadn’t been able to bring myself to kill them yet. By hour 18 I’d set up my new home in a forgotten cave close enough to a clear water river because my father had taught me how important water was for survival and I was going to survive in my new home.

By hour 24 I was already back asleep, hungry, filthy, slightly weepy, but resigned to my fate to live in the wilderness of the preserve for the rest of my miserable life, convinced I’d have to kill one of those cute rabbits tomorrow because the bug soup was not worth repeating.

That’s how they found me.

My mother and Johnathan were both incredibly relieved and laughing their ass off when they saw the remnants of my bug soup fiasco and the nest I’d built in the cave. Talia was also relieved, though the whole “I’m so much better cause I’m the next alpha and you’re just the filth on the bottom of my shoes” act was hard to shake off, so she was mostly pissed off that I’d ruined her moon party and stole all that attention away from her on her special night. My father was proud I’d managed to hide my tracks that well, though he really didn’t like the fact I had resorted to bug soup when clearly there were plenty of rabbits around.

That day said a lot about all of us really.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think!   
> Obviously the posting schedule is all out of whack, and I need to figure something out for my final semester because if the first two weeks are any indication, it's going to be a pain in my ass. Right now I'm just trying to catch up as quickly as possible.


	48. 02/17/2020

**_Something you’re looking forward to_ **

The delivery of my flower press. It should come tomorrow or the day after. It’s not that I’m going to use it much, but I figured that after I’m done with it, Stiles can have it. He’ll probably be able to use it to dry some flowers or herbs for his spells. Since he keeps complaining about how expensive spell and potion ingredients are in their processed or powdered form but how fresh flowers and plants are too much effort to take care of and really he does not have the space in his apartment to start an entire indoor potted plant jungle.

Yeah… He might have mentioned it once or twice. Every hour or so. Ever since he started learning magic.

With a flower press and maybe a dehydrator if I can find a professional grade one that doesn’t take up too much space, he could build his own supply of powdered ingredients. I still think Derek and Scott should get their asses in gear and get the pack house built already so Stiles doesn’t have to worry about the lack of space in his tiny apartment and can just start a magic garden or get a greenhouse or whatever he needs as emissary. But until they get their act together, this will just have to do.

He can buy fresh ingredients in bulk as he needs them, even for plants that are slightly harder to find that squashes the price and delivery costs and he can dry whatever he doesn’t need right that second for later use. It’s a better system than he has now. I don’t want to have to wait for a flower delivery to drive out a demon again. That was not a good week.

So, it’ll make a good gift for Stiles.

And before I give it to Stiles, it’ll help me preserve the tulips. I might turn them into bookmarks. Or bring some petals to Erica so she can make a pair of matching keychains or necklace pendants out of them or something.

He did say he wanted a proper Valentine’s day gift next year. Well no, he said he wanted a box of chocolates and a candle-lit dinner but that is so cliché and unoriginal.

Honestly, who does he take me for?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slightly shorter, but I doubt I need more words to convince you all that Peter Hale is the kind of romantic who goes out of his way to buy a flower press to preserve the first bouquet of flowers Stiles got for him.  
> We all know he is.  
> Well... canon doesn't know, but our hearts know. (I might be slightly delirious because I still need to write 6 of these to catch up, so please just tell me your heart knows.)


	49. 02/18/2020

**_What would you do if money was no object? _ **

Money has never really been an object, so I guess I’m going to have to be that rich bastard who says “literally the same thing I always do: whatever the fuck I want.”

But that would mean I’m already done writing for today and I don’t really want to be done writing yet. If Stiles ever found out I’d gotten so used to this whole diary business so quickly, and then just started depending on it and immediately stopped minding that I depended on it, he’d never stop laughing. Although… I suppose that’s the thing with Stiles, he knows exactly what matters to people and he would never make fun of something that actually matters to someone he loves. But it makes for some pretty cut-throat arguments once you cross him though.

Anyway.

I guess the most expensive thing I want right now is to get the pack house built. But I’ve been going on about that for a really long time now, so I’m not sure what’s actually left to say about it. I could describe my ideal pack house for you if you want?

And there I go again, writing as if my diary is a sentient being who’s somehow actually part of this conversation. If my father could see me now he’d have me committed to Eichen House before immediately convincing my mother they needed a fourth child right the fuck now so dear old Talia wouldn’t be without a left hand.

Okay! Back to the prompt! A pack house!

I just went to make a cup of coffee to think about what I actually want about a pack house and the thing is that I don’t want anything from a pack house. To be honest, a new pack house sounds terrifying to me. It will be empty and reek of paint and packaging plastic and new furniture and builders and contractors and strangers.

And maybe with this ragtag pack it will stay empty. Maybe that’s why neither Derek nor Scott have really brought it up before. Maybe these humans and bitten wolves and kitsunes and banshees don’t want a pack house.

It’ll be an empty house with new-smelling couches that won’t ever feel lived-in and comfortable. It’ll be a house with a fridge that’s too large and we’ll fill it to the brim for the first few weeks only for the food to go bad and the drinks to never have to be restocked. It’ll be a house with a dining table at which 12 chairs stand but only 2 ever get used. It’ll be a house with at least 8 bedrooms and a big nursery, but the nursery never gets furnished and the door always stays closed so the soft yellow paint will keep stinking up the place, and 6 bedrooms become impersonal guestrooms that’ll smell musty and lonely and every time we have to clean them we’ll debate why we even bother. It’ll be a house with too many walls and too little pictures or decorations. Maybe between Derek and I, we’ll have enough to decorate our respective nightstands, the fridge door and maybe put some picture frames in the cold den, but the halls will echo even if we resort to buying some motel-like paintings.

I think I have an answer to the prompt now. If money was no object, if it wasn’t frowned upon to bribe your friends, your family, your packmates into moving into a new house and staying there, that’s what I’d do.

I’d bribe every single one of them, find out their price and pay it right away if that would make a pack house into a home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand another one.   
> Whelp, it didn't take me that long to go right back into utter depressing territory.  
> Not that that's really a surprise, I suppose.


	50. 02/19/2020

**_What do you miss most about your home town?_ **

Oh you know, nothing much… just the actual “home” part.

But I refuse to write something sad/depressing/pathetic about this dire lack of a real home two days in a row, so I’ll just tell you about my day then. Even though nothing much happened.

The flower press got delivered first thing in the morning. So I took a couple of tulips from the vase (they still look great), tore the petals from the stem and put those in the press. It’s going to take ages for them to actually dry, which I might not have taken into account when I first got this idea, so I had to make some space in my dresser to put the press. I really don’t need Stiles coming over and questioning me about my new hobby or my new interest in botany, or whatever.

Knowing Stiles he’ll come with an entire theory on how this is in some way related to murdering someone. Or at least how it could be related to murdering someone but how that’s obviously not what it’s for because I grew out of my murdery phase. Since he trusts me now. Which is still a bit of a new concept to me. Apart from the series of questions that’ll be a little bit annoying but probably entertaining in some way, I just want this to be a surprise.

After putting the press away I spent some time playing with Kat until she was all tuckered out and retreated to her favorite spot on the top of my bookshelf for a nap.

Erica came by then, just as I’d gotten started on lunch. She claimed she needed some quality Kat time, but she didn’t even once make a move to try and get the sleeping ball of grey fur to give her some actual attention. So my best guess is that she needed to get away from an overbearing Boyd for a few hours and heard from Stiles that I had a PlayStation and I wouldn’t bother her if she just wanted to blow out some virtual zombie brains for a while.

It's not actually my best guess, she literally told me that when we had dinner. Yeah… she stayed the entire day. Without telling anyone where she’d gone off to. Boyd wasn’t exactly pleased when after about an hour of Erica annoying his calls, I finally shot him a text saying she was okay and to give her some space unless he’d like her to claw out some non-virtual werewolf throats.

She mostly kept to herself and her zombies, but it was still nice to have some one on one time with a packmate that I don’t usually spend much time with. Even if we didn’t talk much. Even if she just slayed zombies and I just read a very adorable gay novel.

I think that moment where she let me feel her bump when the pup started kicking made up for most of the non-talking parts of the day.

And her not mentioning it when I started crying made up for her putting her shoes on my coffee table.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, last chapter for today. I'll be back with more tomorrow!  
> I feel like it's a good place to stop, the visual of Peter weeping over a baby belly.   
> But like... manly weeping.


	51. 02/20/2020

**_Have you ever had an encounter with the police?_ **

Oh I know what Talia would have to say about this. She’d say that despite me being a criminal defense attorney I’ve had a lot less encounters with the arm of the law than you’d expect. I guess she’d be somewhat right. I definitely caused a lot more trouble than I was ever actually held accountable for.

Of course there were the couple of encounters in more recent years. Being arrested on all kinds of suspicion of murder, but no one was ever even close to make any of those suspicions stick, so obviously those don’t count. The only real encounter I had with the police, you know, the one my family couldn’t stop bringing up at all opportunities, resulted in Beacon Hills First National Bank closing its doors for good.

What can I say? Fifteen year old me really knew how to impress a girl.

In my defense, if a fifteen year old can rob the place, that should really just be considered a very friendly security check and not an actual robbery. And I only robbed my own pack’s security deposit box. I just did it to prove I could. It’s in no way my fault that they severely overreacted and shut the whole place down instead of just mending the flaws in their security. I’d have been happy to act as their advisor on the matter. Lord knows they could have used me. The real issue is that I managed to do it without even setting off any alarms. If Shelley hadn’t been such a reckless driver no one would have even known.

I suppose you want the full story now. Well okay. If you insist, my dear inanimate object I just keep talking to.

It was the eve of… I don’t actually recall. What I do recall is that Shelley had invited me over to hers for what I’d assumed would be a meeting of the intimate kind but ended up being a gathering of her annoying cackle of friends. So I sucked it up, played spin the bottle for an eternity before “accidentally” projectile spinning it into some jock’s crotch. He wasn’t happy. Which is probably why he dared me to rob a fucking bank during our oh so original game of truth or dare.

It worked out that Shelley’s mom worked in the urban planning office so we stole her access pass and got the building plans for the bank that same night. Two nights later I highjacked a digger from a nearby construction site and dug a hole right next to the bank. I used some power tools from that same construction site to drill a hole in the bank’s foundation and I was in. The whole point of the dare was to not get found out though, so I had to evade the cameras and try not to set off the alarm traps, which was harder than I thought it would be, but easier than it should have been. Turns out those old sensors really don’t do well with werewolf speed.

So I got into the safe, which also wasn’t hard since the employee in charge of locking it up properly was too busy flirting with a sixteen year old girl to do his actual job. Which is all kinds of disturbing now I think back on it. I got into our safety deposit box with a claw and good hearing, briefly considered reinventing myself as a professional lockpicker in that moment before hightailing it right back out of there. All undetected.

I neatly filled up the hole in the ground again and returned the tools and digger to the construction site. And that’s when it all went to shit. I met back up with Shelley in front of the bank where she’d parked her dad’s obnoxious Hummer right in front of the big glass front door.

Now one thing you need to know about Shelley, is that she’s smart as a whip in normal situations. But put her under too much stress and she will royally fuck up everything she’s meant to be doing. I hadn’t realized robbing a bank would be so stressful for her. She didn’t even look all that stressed when I jumped back in the car. Really, I had no idea.

Until she just… failed to put the car in reverse and rammed through the front entrance of a bank I’d just successfully robbed in a shower of glass shards like you wouldn’t believe. Alarms went blaring, lights immediately went on, I swear it only took like 30 seconds before I could hear police sirens approaching.

So that was the night my mother took away my allowance for a year and my dad proudly pat me on the back with a “clearly our Peter doesn’t need an allowance anymore.”

The police were very confused as to how two teenagers managed to rob a bank but didn’t really rob anyone since they only took what already belonged to their families. No one got hurt either.

Confusing all around. So were the charges. In the end, after some bribing and all officials eating some humble pie because two teenagers broke into a bank and the worst that happened was some property damage, we were only charged with property damage. And they had to add an indecent exposure charge to my record as well though that might be a story for another time.

You know, I was about to go to bed, but I just realized that I should have broken back into the bank to put the stuff back into the security box and faked a clumsy make-out session or something. I would have had the time when I heard the sirens first approaching. I could have saved both me and Shelley some trouble, though it would have been a lot more embarrassing and I don’t think my father would’ve been all that proud of me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just found it very interesting that that bank closed down.   
> And Stiles was never able to figure out why.  
> It had Hale influences written all over it, I'm telling you.


	52. 02/21/2020

**_Someone who values your opinion._ **

So the actual answer is really too obvious for me to spell out here. I might just talk about some more surprising people instead.

To tell you the truth, it greatly depends on the circumstances. Lots of people value my opinion when it comes to legal matters or the culinary arts, but I can’t think of anyone at all who values my opinions regarding pop punk music. Which is a shame really, Good Charlotte are one of the greats. Anyway, I think in the last couple of years I’ve actually managed to weasel my way deep enough into the pack for them all to value my opinion on various supernatural threats and how to dispose of them. Though I suppose Scott really just values it as a guide on what not to do. At least he’s taking my opinions into consideration these days, it’s more than could be said of his attitude towards me before. Derek has definitely been valuing my input on matters of a threatening supernatural kind a lot lately.

I think he somehow knows just how much I’ve done for this pack behind the scenes. Well, behind the scenes, behind everyone’s backs… the fact that he hasn’t called me out on that speaks volumes. Another thing Derek and Scott value my opinion on is food and wine and how to cook a decent meal for your date. These idiots would be completely hopeless without me, so it’s a good thing they’ve come to their senses and started trusting me. Even if it is only with their food. Although… I suppose that’s interesting.

Letting me handle their food… not just the food for their personal meals, or the meals they share with their dates, but the meals we all share as a pack, it’s almost like they’ve given me the position of den-maker. Which is all kinds of wrong. If anyone shouldn’t be the den-maker, it’s the left hand. I suppose I should talk to them about this at some point. The position is going to be extremely important in a couple of months when the pups arrive.

Erica also values my opinion. On all sorts of things. From cribs to baby clothes to mocktails. Between her asking me for advice on her baby-related online shopping spree and Lydia pushing a couple of fashion magazines my way during our last library… whatever those meetings are, I think it’ll only take them a couple more weeks before they’re ambushing me into a shopping trip. Undoubtedly sponsored by yours truly of course.

So I guess lots of people value my opinion. Not that I can blame them, my opinions are great.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a little past 2 am when I'm posting this, so... I guess I can only hope to catch up over the weekend.


	53. 02/22/2020

_ **What's been your favorite food lately.** _

There’s this vegetarian lasagna that I’ve been making almost every week for a while now. It takes a lot of prep work, especially for larger groups, so I haven’t made it for the pack yet, but I’ve been treating myself with it. Occasionally Stiles. It’s got eggplant and mozzarella and a homemade tomato sauce and all sorts of good things. You can eat it with pasta or just some really nice bread… it’s incredible.

I might have to teach Derek how to make it. He’ll probably lose patience halfway through and insist on a break to watch some home improvement kind of show or something. It’ll be nice to spend some extra time with him outside of our regular cooking classes. I bet he’d love it. And he’d especially like a dish that requires some extra effort for his dates. Even though he’s gotten better at communicating, he’s still more a man of actions than words, so I think he’ll appreciate this recipe.

There’s also that lemon cake Kira keeps making but refuses to give me the recipe of. Which I think is cruel and unjust. I’ve never denied her access to a recipe. Not that she’s ever asked, but the point is I never would. Information should be shared freely within a pack and frankly I take personal offence at not being allowed to know.

I guess I could squeeze it out of her in some way. Maybe withhold Kat pictures until she’s willing to share. Or stop giving Scott cooking advice for their date nights so he can go back to microwaving frozen pizzas. Although I guess it’s unfair to torture a pregnant woman. And it’s definitely frowned upon to stand in between a pregnant woman and decent food I suppose. I could just break into their place and steal it. Or install some discrete cameras in their kitchen. They would never know.

See, I could do all of that. The point is that we’re a pack and I shouldn’t have to and it’s been weeks since she made that lemon cake and I want it.

I might just pay them a visit.

It’ll do Kat good to take a walk anyway.

I bet she won’t deny me some lemon cake if she saw how well Kat’s doing on her leash.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, but if you don't think Peter's the kind of cat owner who trains their cat to get used to a leash and go for walks you're wrong.  
> I don't know what else to tell you.


	54. 02/23/2020

**_I don’t have time for writing prompts or deep introspection_ **

There’s a something in town again. We didn’t have any trouble for a long while, so it was bound to happen one of these days. Both Stiles and Lydia are here at my place now for some research. We don’t have much to go on yet, just a suspicious smell in the preserve and near the loft. Stiles’ wards were triggered during the night and if it’s gotten that close to the loft without us noticing anything but a lingering scent… that’s a little too close for comfort. So the research isn’t really serving a purpose other than to make us feel useful.

And it’s a good excuse to stick together. The rest of the pack have also grouped together for the night.

Kira and Scott are over at Boyd and Erica’s place. I can practically hear Erica’s bitchy rant about “not needing protection just because she’s a little bit pregnant”. And Derek was going to patrol the preserve with Isaac and Jackson to see if they could find anything more for us to research.

I was going to end this with a positive statement about the murder count so far, but let’s not jinx it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess I'm introducing actual plot now.   
> I will regret this in the morning.


	55. 02/24/2020

**_I jinxed it_ **

I didn’t completely jinx it yet, but we found a deer in the preserve that seemed to have been ritually slaughtered. The scene was too bloody for the deer to have just been a food source for whatever is roaming the woods. We also found candlewax on site, so unless this is a monster that loves to turn its bloody kills into candlelit dinners for one, I feel like some sort of ritual is our best bet.

It still doesn’t really narrow anything down. So researching isn’t going to help us at this point. As much as I’d love to spend another night in the comforts of my own home with some pack members around, knowing everyone’s safe, I should probably go out there with Derek tonight. I was surprised he didn’t demand I go immediately, since taking care of problems is pretty much my only job as the left hand.

Maybe if Stiles and Lydia also go over to Erica and Boyd’s place, we can convince Scott Kira will be fine without him for a night. We’d cover a lot more ground if there were five of us out patrolling.


	56. 02/25/2020

**_Nothing_ **

Hours of patrolling and nothing turned up. Not even a whiff of that strange stink we smelled around the loft and at the crime scene. The crime scene being the deer. No deaths as of yet. Though the Sheriff let us know a missing person’s report came in today. Someone went for a jog in the preserve and never returned. So that’s what the sheriff, Parrish, Scott and Stiles are looking for now, the missing jogger. Hopefully she won’t turn up dead, but I’m not placing my bets on it.

Together with Lydia I went back to where we found the deer. We combed over the whole site and widened the perimeter a few times. The only mildly suspicious thing we found is a tuft of fur stuck to the bark of a tree. It didn’t immediately smell familiar, but it could’ve just lost some of its scent over the period of time it's been there. For all we know it’s been there for months. The fact that we were desperate enough to even consider it evidence speaks volumes. We brought it to Deaton to get it analyzed but knowing him that’ll take a while.

I hate not knowing. I hate not having any clues.

Not just because it’s frustrating, but because it shows how meticulous and smart this thing is. I don’t want it anywhere on my territory, I don’t want it anywhere near my pack. I’d rather fight a mindless monster any day than have to figure out what a meticulous killer wants, let alone figure out how to defeat them. And it got to the loft, it knows where the core of our pack is, where one of our alphas lives.

It can’t be here now. This can’t happen now. After years of fighting tooth and nail for my pack to see another day we finally regained some semblance of security, of safety. There are pups on the way. We are so close to being okay. The only thing that was still missing was our pack house. And now we have a monster on the loose in our territory, while we’re expecting pups and our pack is being split into fragments because we don’t have one home to defend, we have almost ten.

We can’t fight on ten fronts. But it would be stupid to leave Kira’s parents or Melissa or the sheriff undefended because their houses will smell enough of pack to warrant a visit from this intruder if they’re after us. And if they’re on our territory, they are after us. They didn’t come to Beacon Hills to kill a random deer.

We need to figure out a better way to either distribute our fighting power or limit our fronts.

This is clearly not the time to be journaling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Peter is a better person now.  
> He won't say "I told you so" in the middle of a crisis.  
> But we all know he told them so. A pack needs a home.


	57. 02/26/2020

**_I could keep pretending I’m doing this journal stuff because Stiles asked me to and gave me interesting introspective prompts or I could own up to this having become a routine now._ **

So the tuft of fur we found turned out to be from a lion. Which means it’s obviously related to this thing, but also means nothing. A lion. How? Why? What the fuck? Our best guess right now is an exotic shapeshifter. Which is such a basic guess. I don’t really like our chances with that one, because shapeshifters are rarely into the ritualistic magic related stuff. And if they need a ritual for some reason or other, they tend to stick on their own territory, they don’t just sneak onto an established pack’s land to do it. It adds too much risk, too many variables they can’t account for.

Another incredibly vague working theory we’ve got right now is the Worm Moon. Rituals that are worth going into taken territory for, usually take more than one sacrifice. And this killer is clearly taking their time, since we still have nothing more than the dead deer and the missing person’s report (which might not even be related because it was an animal kill, but we don’t actually know because two don’t make a pattern). So if they’re aiming for the Worm Moon as the big finale of their ritual, well… the timing could fit. Or it could be not at all related to it.

Did I mention we have nothing? Because we have nothing. We have a tuft of lion fur. Which somehow is less help than not having the lion fur at all.

We also have their scent in the lobby of my building. But no trace of it going in or out.

A shapeshifter can’t just apparate or teleport or…

It was in my building.

Lydia and Parrish spent the night in my place. That thing showed up and I didn’t even know it was there.

What if it had just taken the elevator up a couple of floors? What if it had apparated right into my living room? What if Stiles had been there? What if Erica had been there? What if Kira had been there?

And we don’t even know what it is, what it wants, where it’s hiding, we don’t know anything, even though it’s getting so close to us. Almost like it’s taunting us.

Stiles is at Deaton’s right now, trying to get all the ingredients together for a tracking spell. There’s not a lot of fur, and there’s not even any way of knowing if the fur will actually lead to the thing, but we can’t keep sitting on our asses doing nothing while this thing is getting closer and closer to our pack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Peter's totally handeling this very well.


End file.
